Joint Informational Hearing of the
Joint Informational Hearing of the
Senate Health Committee
Senate Subcommittee on Aging & Long-Term Care
Assembly Aging & Long-Term Care Committee
Assembly Health Committee
Chairs:
Senators Deborah Ortiz and Elaine Alquist
Assemblymembers Patty Berg and Wilma Chan
“Federal Medicare Prescription Drug Act:
State Readiness, Implementation,
and Consumer Issues”
March 16, 2005
State Capitol
Sacramento, California
SENATOR DEBORAH ORTIZ: . . . work through, in my estimation.
Finally, we’re concerned about the state’s ability to conduct intense and coordinated outreach efforts, particularly for dual-eligible, low-income beneficiaries who meet the age requirements of Medicare, particularly those with mental illness, those with developmental disabilities, and others with special needs. They’re a particularly vulnerable and problematic population, and we need to make sure that this program will serve them. This is a very far-reaching proposal, with many complicated provisions. These beneficiaries need targeted and hands-on outreach as well as district face-to-face counseling. We need to assist them in choosing and enrolling in a plan that meets their healthcare needs.
We’re also concerned about the adequacy of that drug benefit program. I, like others, fear that the new plans will not offer the formularies that are comparable to the state’s Medi-Cal formulary. Inadequate formularies will force many of these beneficiaries to either pay higher costs or undergo the appeal process to access the drugs they need. That appeal process is not one that is easy to maneuver. All of this will disrupt their continuity of care and in many cases jeopardize the quality of their health.
Just as we’re concerned about the potential impact on the state’s Medi-Cal program in the face of what is this complicated Part D provision, we are also concerned about the federal cuts that affect state Medicaid budgets nationally. The federal government is imposing a huge administrative cost to many of the states at a time when many states like ourselves are trimming the resources to support these efforts. So, we’re in a Catch-22 situation.
Finally, let me just say we’re looking forward to the testimony today. I appreciate the responsiveness of all of our witnesses to be a part of the very important and continuing policy discussion.
Let me now turn it over to my colleague, the chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Aging and Long-Term Care, Senator Alquist, and allow other Members, if they’d like, to weigh in after Senator Alquist.
SENATOR ELAINE ALQUIST: Thank you, Senator Ortiz. I’m pleased to be here and to co-chair this hearing with you as well as with the Assembly Committee on Aging and Long-Term Care and the Assembly Health Committee. I’ve had an interest in senior issues for many years and helped to recreate the Assembly Committee on Aging and Long-Term Care some years ago.
I look forward to the discussion on the new Part D benefits under Medicare. As Senator Ortiz said, I think it’s really important for us to figure out how California residents will benefit from this program and if, in fact, will they benefit? I think there are a lot of things that are still fuzzy—nebulous—to understand. And so, not only for my constituents in Santa Clara County, but for seniors as well as for disabled throughout the State of California, it behooves us to really understand what is being promoted.
Thank you very much.
SENATOR ORTIZ: Let me turn the podium over to Assemblymember Berg, who is the chair of the Assembly Aging and Long-Term Care Committee. I understand Assemblymember Chan, who is the chair of the Assembly Health Committee, will not be joining us today due to illness. But welcome, Madam Chair.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER PATTY BERG: Thank you, Senator Ortiz. I’d like to also thank you as well as the Senate Health Committee for taking the lead in planning this hearing.
The implementation of Medicare Part D includes many daunting challenges for California, and I share the concerns of my colleagues regarding our readiness. The majority of older adults don’t understand what these changes mean or how these changes are going to affect them. They don’t understand what, if anything, they should be doing. A recent poll that was conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation asked older adults whether or not they will enroll in a Medicare drug plan in 2006, and nearly 40 percent said they would not enroll, and another 37 percent said they did not have enough information to decide.
As a former Area Agency on Aging director, I am particularly concerned about the capacity of our Health Insurance Counseling and Advocacy Program (better known as HICAP) to meet the anticipated increase in demand. The HICAP program’s expected to play an integral role in implementing the changes; yet, the program is not receiving enough money to get the job done. HICAP is being asked to do more with less. The complexity of the Medicare changes will require more calls and longer and more frequent counseling visits. Clearly, we have a long way to go in educating beneficiaries if they are going to be able to make informed decisions.
I look forward to hearing from both the state as well as the federal representatives, the advocates, and organizations that are on the agenda regarding California’s readiness. However, even if the implementation goes smoothly, we’ve only addressed part of the problem. Medicare Part D has significant gaps and unresolved issues. We still have a long road ahead of us in providing access to affordable prescription drugs for all Californians.
Thank you, Senator.
SENATOR ALQUIST: With that, we will go to the “State Perspective,” starting with Stan Rosenstein. And if the others would like to come up: Lora Connolly, Carol Risley, Sheri Lowenstein, and Dan Carson, please.
MR. STAN ROSENSTEIN: Good afternoon. Thank you to the chairs and the Members for having this very important hearing. I’m happy to be back here to discuss this. I was able to present last year. We’ve really been on a crusade on this issue. We think it’s very, very important.
My name is Stan Rosenstein. I’m the deputy director in charge of Medi-Cal for the Department of Health Services. We have a very significant role in implementing this very important program.
This is one, if not the largest, change in healthcare in the country in the last thirty years. It is a monumental effort. It will provide drug benefits to people who are low income, not Medicaid, not Medi-Cal qualified, who don’t have it now, and the uninsured at levels they currently do not have. It will have many, many benefits. It will be a major change for the Medicare/Medi-Cal dual eligibles—people who are dually eligible for both programs.
My focus today will be on the issues that relate to the state; so I won’t be focusing on issues related to the overall program—how it will work for people who are not state covered. My focus will be predominately on duals, with a little bit of discussion on the low-income subsidy.
We are very committed at the Department of Health Services in working with our sister agencies—and I’ll talk about that a little bit later—in planning this right and doing what we can to assist the federal government in implementing this very important program. We are here to help the federal government to the extent we can. We started on this process early. This is one of the areas that we actually got on top of things early. With that said, though, the State of California does have a limited role. We’ll work within our limited role, but the prime responsibility for the program does fall to the federal government. We are very limited in what we can do, and we intend to do a very good job on what we can do.
There are almost 39 million people on Medicare. About 6.8 million of them are what they call “dual eligibles.” In California, we have almost 1 out of 7 dual eligibles in this state. A million people who are getting services from Medi-Cal today, they are getting all of their drug benefits from either the Medi-Cal fee-for-service program or from. . . . about 37,000 people are getting their drug benefits from our Medi-Cal managed care plans.
As people noted, Medi-Cal has a very comprehensive drug program. We do a good job controlling utilization, but we cover every FDA-approved drug in the program, either with or without prior authorization. We make drugs, in our opinion, very accessible to people. It’s a very good program, from our opinion. And I think most people would agree, it’s a pretty good program in terms of the benefits it offers.
Dual eligibles are uniquely affected by the change. Dual eligibles are unique in the Medicare program. They’re more than twice as likely to be of fair or poor health condition as other Medicare individuals. Fifty-two percent of the duals are in fair or poor health—24 percent of all the Medicare beneficiaries. Nearly a quarter of all the dual eligibles are in nursing facilities or long-term care facilities, very much so, and we’ll talk about it. People with developmental disabilities, the mental health programs, are predominately dual eligibles. Over half of the disabled population in the Medi-Cal program are dual eligible. Eighty-five percent of the people in Medi-Cal long-term care facilities are dual eligible. So, it is a very fragile population that we’re dealing with.
Let me, first of all, talk about the fiscal impact. When Congress passed the bill, it was intended that states would see a 10 percent savings reduction in their cost of providing drug services to dual eligibles. As the dual eligibles shifted to Medicare—and that is mandated—states would save 10 percent of that cost. When we’ve now calculated things out, based upon the way the calculations are being done, we believe that 10 percent savings will not materialize. Instead, in Fiscal Year ’06/’07—actually, Calendar Year ’06—we will see a $215 million increased cost to the Medi-Cal program. So, we’ve gone from a 10 percent savings, based upon how the calculation is done, to having to pay $215 million more to the federal government—what we call the “clawback” payments to the federal government—for the services than we would have paid had we kept the coverage. So, we’re very disappointed in that.
We’re raising those concerns because we think we’re entitled by Congress to a 10 percent savings and instead we’ve got a cost. That cost of $215 million limits what we can do to address some of the gaps in coverage. And there are some potential gaps in drug coverage for dual eligibles. Again, you’ve got a population, if you’re not covered by insurance now, of low income moving to a coverage. You’re getting a much better coverage than you had today. For dual eligibles, they’ve got a pretty good coverage package; pretty much voluntary co-pays covering virtually every drug that the FDA approves, going to a program that will be more limited.
This change for dual eligibles occurs at 100 percent of the dual eligibles on January 1, 2006. Every other Medicare beneficiary will get between, actually, November and, I think, May 15th to enroll. The dual eligibles have to be enrolled by January 1, 2006. Our funding for dual eligibles, Medi-Cal funding, ends at that date. So, we’ll have a situation in January where, even in the best of circumstances, the take-up rate for non-duals will be slow. People will take their time even if they’re going to enroll. Immediately, we’re going to move a million people who are dual eligibles into the Medicare plan on that first day. So, in January, the people in the Medicare drug plan will be the dual eligibles. There’ll be a few other people, but it will be a million duals who are the most fragile people.
Again, just to go through the savings, there was supposed to be savings. We’ve ended up with a cost of $215 million that we’ll have to spend a year. Actually, the cost grows beyond what we would spend for Medi-Cal coverage. We believe that there are flaws in the formula that the federal government has used to calculate it, and we believe the federal Administration’s Secretary of DHHS can fix those formulas and give us at least a break-even position.
The problem where the formula disadvantages us is it does an “apples to oranges” comparison of the cost of the drugs to when the rebates come in. So, we’re using 2003 prescriptions and rebates received for 2002 drugs, and as the program is increased, the rebates obviously increase, and we don’t get credit for that.
The second problem is it doesn’t take into account all of the programmatic savings that we’ve made in the Medi-Cal budget since 2003. Many of you will remember that last year in September we implemented a substantial rate decrease for pharmacies. We don’t get the benefit of that in the clawback. We’ve been successful in getting additional supplemental rebates; we don’t get the benefit of that. We’ve asked the federal government to recognize that and give us a better deal. We do think there are things that the Administration could do administratively.
Let me talk about the transition of dual eligibles. This is, by far, the most significant thing I’ll talk about. I think when we come into December and January and November, this will be a major healthcare issue. So, we’re working hard to plan that out now.
First, dual eligibles—the million people in California—will be automatically enrolled in a Medicare Part D plan and will get their prescription service starting in a plan January 1, 2006. And I think CMS is doing the right thing. What they’re doing is they’re putting people in first, and then they’re giving people a choice in moving out. But what will be important to us to know is: Have they been put in a plan that serves them? Do they know they have coverage in a plan? Because our concern is that unless people are properly educated, they will appear at the pharmacy or they’ll be in a nursing facility or some situation January 1st or 2nd, thinking they’ve got Medi-Cal coverage. What the pharmacy will find out is they’ve got enrollment in another plan. The pharmacy is going to have to figure it out. The pharmacy may not even participate in the plan that the person’s now under. So, we’re very, very concerned about the transition. Education and outreach is very important.
I see I’m running out of time, so let me make a couple of comments. We think it’s very important that the federal government provide for continuity of care, and we’ve asked the federal government to do this. We haven’t yet got approval to this, but we think that because Medicaid is a. . . . Medi-Cal’s a federal program, that the Medicare contractor for the first six months, a year, should honor any drug that Medi-Cal has offered and just say, If you got it from Medi-Cal, you can get it. We think that’s very important because the last thing we want to do is have people confused in having to change their drugs. Medicare has said they’ll do some planning and make sure people have comprehensive plans. We’re in support of that, but we don’t know exactly what it means.
Skipping over, just to talk real briefly, as I’m running out of time, on what we’re doing, we have a team of people who are working on this, led by a pharmacist on my staff. Department of Aging, Department of Developmental Services, and Department of Mental Health are deeply engaged. We bring them to everything. We are showing leadership nationally. I’ve been in Washington, talking to Congress about these same issues. We have worked with the advocates. We’re working with providers. Everywhere we’re going, we try to make sure people are aware. We are working on a comprehensive outreach plan, which we’ll have available in the May revise, to talk about how we plan to do our share of outreaching to the dual eligibles. It’ll be different in. . . . each of the departments will talk about their pieces.
Let me conclude, then, and ask if there are any questions.
SENATOR ALQUIST: Thank you very much. Are there any questions from our Members?
Assemblymember Berg?
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Yes. I have several questions for you, actually, because you really talked about the fiscal issues. I mean, I’m just stunned by all of this. I just find it all overwhelming.
How will all of the state departments coordinate consumer education efforts for Part D? Has there been discussion about that yet?
MR. ROSENSTEIN: Absolutely. We’ve had discussions among the departments and with our Health and Human Services Agency. We are concerned about getting the information out, but we’re equally concerned about bombarding people and confusing them. We’ve got a team working together. The Department of Health Services has certain responsibilities: We have to notify everybody. We’ll work on materials. We’ll move them to the Department of Developmental Services. They’ll move them and produce them in a way that will notify their population. The same with Mental Health. So, the predominate communication for developmental services will be through the Department of Developmental Services. We’re working with the Department of Aging and HICAP, and I’m sure Lora will talk about it. It’s a critical issue. We started those discussions several months ago. We’re also trying to coordinate with the Social Security Administration, who’s doing outreach, as well as Medicare.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: How will DHS notify eligibles about the transition to Medicare Part D and include referrals to local HICAP providers for one-on-one counseling?
MR. ROSENSTEIN: We’re still working on the second part of that. We plan to do a series of notices. We’re not sure how many. We’re overplanning right now, and we’ll probably take some out. But we have to give a Notice of Action that will terminate the benefit because we’re formally terminating a Medi-Cal benefit. I don’t know if we know the detail yet on how to communicate in HICAP, but that’s an important item. I don’t know if Lora. . . . but that is an important detail. And the question will be—and Lora will talk about it—is: Can we get the HICAPs funded and operational early enough?
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: How will each of the departments involved reach eligible consumers that have been traditionally hard to reach? Or has that been brought into the discussion?
MR. ROSENSTEIN: That’s always our biggest challenge. We’re trying to work through several facets. That’s a very hard thing to do, the formal notification processes through each of the programs, through our providers. We’ve worked with the Pharmacy Association, the Medical Association. We think a lot of the notices, really, are going to have to happen at the pharmacy level. That’s where people go to get their drugs. A lot of the notice, unfortunately, is going to happen around January 2nd, when people really start to understand it.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Two more questions. Have the counties indicated how they plan to address the additional workload without additional funding?
MR. ROSENSTEIN: The counties, in terms of. . . ?
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: County welfare departments.
MR. ROSENSTEIN: Well, we would fund them if there’s additional workload. They’ll get a lot of calls. But we fully fund the counties in terms of Medi-Cal county administration. So, we would fund it if they had additional workload. But they will be, around the change of the year, will be bombarded, as I think everybody will be.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Okay. Thank you very much.
SENATOR ALQUIST: Thank you. Are there other questions, Members? Thank you very much.
We’ll go on to the Lora Connolly, director of Department of Aging.
MS. LORA CONNOLLY: Good afternoon, Madam Chair and committee members. Thank you for the opportunity to address you today. I’m Lora Connolly, acting director of the Department of Aging.
The Department of Aging administers a variety of supportive services in the home, the community, and in residential and skilled nursing facilities for older adults and adults with disabilities. These services are provided through a network of Area Agencies on Aging, Multipurpose Senior Services waiver sites, Adult Day Health Care centers, and the Ombudsman Program. Almost 100 percent of the clients in these programs are Medicare beneficiaries, and a high percentage of them are also dual eligibles. The implementation of MMA will certainly present challenges for all Medicare beneficiaries in understanding, first of all, what the new benefit is and determining what the cost benefit of it is for themselves, and secondly, how this benefit impacts other coverage that they currently have. Be that in terms of retiree healthcare coverage, a Medigap policy, or Medicare Advantage plan, they are all impacted.
It’s estimated on average that older adults take about five prescriptions daily, and that rate actually increases with age. So, finding a drug plan that will cover all of the drugs that individuals may be on will be challenging for many individuals. But as Stan noted, the MMA will be most challenging for the dual eligibles because, as noted, they are poor and often have significant health conditions for which they need multiple medications, and their prescription coverage under Medi-Cal will end, effective January 1, 2006. As Stan noted, they will be auto-enrolled into a prescription drug plan which may or may not cover the prescriptions they’re currently on, and while they can opt out of that plan for one that might meet their needs better, there are huge potentials for negative outcomes, given the short timeframe for that transition.
Duals will be notified in early October about what plan they’ve been auto-enrolled in but would need, first of all, to learn how to opt out of that plan, identify a more suitable plan, and then get enrolled in that plan, in a process that’s probably less than two months. Given that California has one-sixth of the country’s dual eligibles transitioning, a large number of these individuals within a two-month timeframe will certainly be a Herculean task.
In terms of coordinating efforts, Stan has addressed that generally in his remarks. This is a new federal benefit, so close communication between CMS and the Social Security Administration and those of us who are state partners is really essential. At the state level, DHS has taken the lead on the Medi-Cal policy issues and operational issues. Last fall, DHS initiated a workgroup of state departments impacted, to bring us together to begin thinking about and addressing these issues. I have to say, we could not have asked for better leadership and more inclusion than what DHS has provided, and we are very appreciative.
The Health and Human Services Agency has also recently convened a stakeholder workgroup as a vehicle for coordinating our collected outreach and MMA activities because we know that many advocacy and nongovernmental organizations will also be very involved in making outreach and trying to educate their constituent groups. There’s so much that needs to be done. We want to make sure that, collectively, we’re coordinating our efforts, not tripping over each other and then further confusing the public that we’re trying to serve.
Given Department of Aging’s program areas, we will be coordinating very closely with the local HICAP programs, their association, the Area Agencies on Aging, the Long-Term Care Ombudsman Programs and their association, and a broad stakeholder network which certainly includes the Adult Day Health Care providers and the MSSP waiver sites among many of our providers at the local level.
In every respect, our implementation activities hinge on clear lines of communication and the deliverables that CMS and the Social Security Administration are developing in terms of responding to the state’s many questions that we still have, communication plans that they’re developing, curriculum for the HICAP program volunteer training, and then training for state and HICAP program managers, which CMS will be providing.
Department of Aging has three core areas of involvement in terms of MMA implementation: HICAP, the Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program, and our overall public information role. First and foremost, of course, is HICAP, the Health Insurance Counseling and Advocacy Program, which the department administers in partnership with Area Agencies on Aging and the twenty-four local HICAP programs. The HICAP team within CDA is our primary link in coordinating with CMS, Social Security Administration, and our collaborations with Health Services and our sister departments that serve Medicare beneficiaries.
In terms of HICAP public information and counseling activities, one of CDA’s major responsibilities is, certainly, to secure additional resources available from CMS and getting those resources out to the local HICAPs. Another important task is coordinating with the HICAPs in terms of determining which activities can be best accomplished through state level coordination versus ones that really need to be handled individually at the local level. And then finally, to be monitoring implementation activities and triaging as issues arise. That will be important in the coming months.
In terms of resources secured, CDA received a supplemental grant from CMS for $760,000 and are using that funding in current year. CDA just submitted a CMS grant, requesting $2.4 million to support MMA implementation activities, and we should know by late April how much CMS has awarded us for those activities.
Just to provide some more detail in terms of key HICAP activities and kind of our timeline moving forward in the coming months, first of all, we know that we need to be preparing beneficiaries. To the degree that we can really coordinate well with CMS and Social Security in terms of the messages that they’re getting out and help consumers at least understand conceptually what this benefit is earlier on, it will work out better in the fall when, actually, plan details are available, and then individuals can focus in on looking at the plans and making decisions at that point.
We need to be recruiting more HICAP counselors, and that’s an effort that is getting underway, especially in hard-to-reach areas of the state and most especially in terms of recruiting bilingual volunteers and those who come from underserved communities. When I look at the HICAP program, I think one of the positive outcomes of the implementation of MMA will be that we will have much more diversity in terms of our HICAP volunteers.
SENATOR ALQUIST: I’d like to ask a question or two.
MS. CONNOLLY: Sure.
SENATOR ALQUIST: The first one is, I can tell it’s really important the role that HICAP is playing in all of this in communicating information, counseling, et cetera. I know that you mentioned that there was $2.4 million allocated for HICAP.
MS. CONNOLLY: We’ve applied for a grant and hope to receive that.
SENATOR ALQUIST: Applied. So, right now there’s none? There is no money right now, the 740,000? I’m hearing different numbers, and I just would like that clarified.
And then, the second question is, the money needs to go to HICAP in a timely fashion in order to be of help to people. Certainly, people need the information by, what?—September, at the latest? So, if you can give us a timeline of getting the money and when it will be dispersed.
And then last is just a statement, and that is, you said there was money for bilingual support. Given we live in California, we have people who speak many languages. What are you doing to address the need to get information to people in many different languages?
So, it’s really, kind of, three questions.
MS. CONNOLLY: In terms of the HICAP funding, let me just clarify there. There is ongoing, what I will refer to as, baseline HICAP program funding that continues from year to year. The $765,000 that we have received in current year actually is making its way . . . [portion of dialogue missing from tape] . . . programs at this point in time. So, we received the funding earlier, and it goes through the Area Agencies to the HICAP programs.
In terms of the additional $2.4 million—and we’ll be optimistic that we get the full amount—we should know by the end of April what that grant award is. Our goal is to actually get that out to the Area Agencies by May, and then, they need to get that out to the local HICAP programs. Depending on the configuration at the local level, that can be done relatively quickly, or it could take up to four months for that funding to actually reach the HICAP programs.
SENATOR ALQUIST: Did you have a thought as to my statement on the need for monies for communication in many languages, not just two?
MR. ROSENSTEIN: I was going to address that.
SENATOR ALQUIST: Thank you.
MR. ROSENSTEIN: We’re looking at between 11 and 14 languages for our communications. Our normal has been 11 languages, but we’re looking at upping it to 14 in this process.
MS. CONNOLLY: Just to pick up in terms of the HICAP activities, secondly would certainly be to prepare the existing counselors and recruited counselors. Our goal is to have those counselors trained, at least in terms of the basics on the MMA Part D, by the end of July. We released an RFP on March 8th to develop and conduct this training. While historically the HICAP programs have focused on Medicare and long-term care issues and linked clients who came in with questions related to Medi-Cal over to Department of Health Services, given the major impact of the MMA on the dual eligibles, it’s very important for the HICAP counselors to get much more education and training on how to better serve the dual eligibles directly. And so, that will be part of that training in the summer.
We also need to redesign the core HICAP curriculum to include the Part D benefit.
The HICAP program will also be involved in providing counseling on this new benefit and its impact on other coverage areas to a much greater number of individuals. As Stan mentioned, we have four million Medicare beneficiaries in the state and one million who are dual eligibles.
I’m just going to quickly mention two things. One of the things that we plan to implement in the HICAP program, given the role of MMA, is a new classification of counselors who we are calling “enrollment specialists.” They will not be fully trained HICAP counselors but individuals who are particularly trained on the MMA benefit and who can help individuals in terms of better understanding that benefit and becoming enrolled. We particularly see this to be crucial in terms of getting that greater diversity into the program more quickly.
And finally, I’d just like to mention, in conclusion, the ombudsman’s role in this. As Stan had noted, the vast majority of nursing home residents are both Medicare beneficiaries and dual eligibles, and a large proportion of them lack the capacity to potentially be making decisions in terms of their own healthcare needs. The Office of the State Long-Term Care Ombudsman will be convening meetings to coordinate efforts in reaching these beneficiaries who are in skilled nursing facilities and in assisted living facilities. They’ll be meeting with long-term care trade associations, licensing and certification agencies, four long-term care facilities, and with the HICAP program to be coordinating in terms of what do we project the key issues to be for residents in these facilities and how do we effectively respond to them and, if necessary, get them linked over to HICAP counseling? We will be doing training for all of the long-term care program coordinators in April, here in Sacramento. I know CMS and Social Security will be participating in that training as well.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Senator Cox?
SENATOR DAVE COX: Madam Chair, I see Senator Alquist is gone, but may I just ask a question relative to the number of languages in which we are required to communicate?
MR. ROSENSTEIN: The federal and state requirements actually require us to be able to communicate in any language that a person encounters—comes to us. Often, we use that through translation services. The requirement in the state law is that we communicate in any language when we have 5 percent coverage in our populations.
SENATOR COX: And what would that number be, sir?
MR. ROSENSTEIN: It’s currently between 11 and 15 languages. It goes by geographical area. So, if we have a geographical area—this is under the Dymally-Alatorre Act—we’re required to communicate in those languages.
SENATOR COX: And only for the record, do you have any idea how much additional it costs to provide the additional translation and the material, et cetera, to communicate in all of the languages, with the exception of English?
MR. ROSENSTEIN: I don’t have an exact amount. It usually ranges, adding the cost of publication, by about $100,000 per publication—around that neighborhood—to do the translations.
SENATOR COX: One hundred thousand for a…?
MR. ROSENSTEIN: Per publication. That’s an approximate number.
SENATOR COX: I understand. Thanks very much. Thank you, Madam Chair.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: You’re welcome. Are there other questions of Ms. Connolly?
I have a couple. I know that there are areas of the state that face a more significant shortage than other parts of the state for certain kinds of trained individuals that provide service through Area Agencies on Aging—case managers, for example. Is that true in terms of HICAP? I mean, are there areas of the state that face a more significant shortage of HICAP counselors than others?
And then, the second question: When you mentioned ombudsmen, because the majority of all of our ombudsmen are volunteers, they are not going to be doing counseling as it relates to the program. Correct?
MS. CONNOLLY: That is correct.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: They’d just be identifying people.
MS. CONNOLLY: Right. The ombudsman role really would be, as they identify individuals for whom they’ve recognized that there’s an issue—and this is what we’re actually trying to work out in these meetings—to make sure that the facility is aware and who is the correct kind of liaison at the facility level, and then, if necessary, make that connection with the HICAP program. But they would not actually be involved in doing counseling.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Okay. And then, the concern I have about statewide coverage.
MS. CONNOLLY: In terms of the number of volunteers in relation to the potential need statewide and in the different HICAP program sites, I don’t actually have that information, but we’d be happy to do the research and get back to you on that.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Okay. Thank you so much.
Any other questions?
I’m going to call on Sheri Lowenstein next. Sheri?
MS. SHERI LOWENSTEIN: Hi. Sheri Lowenstein, Department of Managed Health Care.
Obviously, the impact of the Medicare Modernization Act is significantly different for the Department of Managed Health Care than it is for these other departments. Our main function, of course, is to license and regulate HMOs under the Knox-Keene Act. So, for us, the impact of this act is primarily on some of our existing, what used to be the Medicare+Choice programs—which is now going to become Medicare Advantage Programs—and the new prescription drug plans, which are the standalone pure prescription drug plans separate and apart from a Medicare Advantage Program, which is your comprehensive HMO plus a prescription drug plan.
The biggest issue, I think, that we’re struggling with is that the Medicare Modernization Act has very broad preemption language. Under existing law and under our previous regulation of Medicare—what were +Choice plans—we were preempted to a great degree, but we had some level of control. The new act appears to be even broader; preemption language that pretty much, what we understand at this point is our sole area of regulatory authority, is going to be with respect to the initial license of either the PDP or if the Medicare Advantage Plan offers a new line of business that has the Part D prescription drug plan in it, as well as financial solvency.
At this point, we were initially waiting for the federal regulations to come out, which came out at the end of January. They’re about twelve hundred pages long. We are trying to go through them and figure them out. Our biggest issue is that the definition of what it means to “license” a prescription drug plan is really not clear. They say we have the authority to do so, but what we consider to be a license and what they consider to be a license are not necessarily the same thing. So, we’re in the somewhat painful process of trying to figure out exactly what that means. Right now we are doing a rather stringent review of the federal law and our law and trying to figure that out. Our next step is going to be to talk to CMS in some detail about what we see the issues are, to get feedback from them and to essentially figure out if we need to do regulations or legislation. I think we’ve concluded we’re probably going to need to do something. We know there is, obviously, a couple of pieces of legislation that are dealing with this.
We also know that our timelines are extremely short. We are anticipating filing of prescription drug plans probably as early as June. Needless to say, we don’t have a lot of time to figure this out, so it is considered a very high priority in the department to do so.
But I don’t have a lot more detail to give you because there’s so much that we just don’t know at this point.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Any questions? Okay. Thank you very much.
Carol Risley.
MS. CAROL RISLEY: Thank you, Madam Chair and Members. We very much appreciate the chance to present before you today to talk specifically about the potential impacts, and I want to impress upon the word “potential” because there are more unanswered questions than there are answered items at this moment.
As you all know, people with developmental disabilities can be the most vulnerable; certainly can have significant illnesses and different drug regimes and also happen to be extremely poor. If you figure for a person on SSI, all but $98 of their monthly check goes to where they live. When we start talking about potential co-payments and premium payments, it’s going to have to come out of that $98. So, we’re particularly concerned about our ability to meet their needs.
For a perspective, we currently, as of January 2005, identified about 40,000 people with developmental disabilities who are dual eligible. That’s out of about 200,000 people that the regional center system currently serves. About 2,200 of those people live in our state-operated facilities which, in itself—I’ll talk about in a little bit—create a challenge for us, having to do with long-term care pharmacies. We’re in the pharmacy business now. We think we’re going to have to continue in the pharmacy business. And the other, about 37,000, live throughout this state in the community.
I have given you a copy of these points, and attached to it are two charts that show how that population is broken down by regional center and by developmental center. I do apologize—I just realized that the regional centers are in an acronym form, and I will correct that for you.
Currently, residents of state-operated facilities receive their drug services through our own pharmacies, operated in-house. The other consumers, the 37,000 in the community, go to the drugstore with their Medi-Cal card the way that other people do.
I also want to acknowledge the work of the Department of Health Services—Stan and his staff. I feel like by the time I need this coverage, I might understand it. I’m hoping. There are days when I think I need it now. This is an extremely complicated issue, and then, when you add on all the little nuances that we bring to the table, I think we’ve probably tested their patience as much as the system has tested ours so far.
Some issues that we’re trying to mitigate: the formularies. We do not know at this moment but we do anticipate that they will not cover all the drugs, as Stan said, that are currently being used today or out there today and available. In order for a consumer in our system to access that, they may need to change their drugs or go through the appeals process. The difficulty is, when you’re on a seizure medication, for example, you don’t just change; you titrate. Many people spent years finding the appropriate seizure medication, and if you can’t get the drug during even the shortest of appeal procedure—which they tell us is about seven days—it’s unclear what that impact could be. We certainly are concerned about the health and safety during all of those occasions.
Again, we know that people with dual eligibles will be auto-enrolled. We hear they’ll be auto-enrolled in what I will euphemistically call the “cheap plan,” which has the lower premium, but whether that plan will indeed meet their needs— If it doesn’t and they need to be disenrolled and enrolled in a more appropriate one, there could be more out-of-pocket funding. Certainly, co-payments for the drugs themselves—currently, we know a lot of people go to the drugstore. The pharmacy just doesn’t collect it because, frankly, it’s more trouble than it’s worth to collect a dollar or three dollars—not from you and I for the $45 we pay—but if they do decide to collect it, there’s another out-of-pocket expense that is not currently experienced by this very limited income group of people.
The initial confusion of this transition is going to cause distress. It doesn’t matter how good the letter is. At some point it will be a notice that says, You no longer will get your drugs the way you get them. There will be distress. People will be confused. We’re talking about people who. . . . we have, also, a variety of languages, but we have a variety of cognitive ability to understand this. And there isn’t always somebody attached to these people to read the mail. So, there will be some level of distress and confusion.
Consumers will need to make informed choices about extremely complicated issues. I was sitting back here earlier and hearing someone say. . . . someone had said somebody wouldn’t understand this, and somebody said, Somebody younger wouldn’t either. I can tell you, the problem will just get bigger with a person who has some cognitive limitations.
We are very lucky to have the regional center system, which is a case management system. Where HICAP will be doing a lot of, what I would call, the “general senior population,” we’re very lucky: We have already identified these 40,000 people by name and by address. We already are preparing to get those names out to the regional centers, preparing materials for them to begin the education process. But getting too soon will also create a certain amount of distress. So, like Health Services, we’re trying to figure out what’s the timing and how to do this without creating more problems.
We are working on outreach materials because we need materials not just in different languages but in simpler language than typically, say, the federal government might give us, and also using graphics, audio, other versions of communications. So, we are currently trying to absorb and begin to do that.
We’ll need to do training: consumers, families, regional center service coordinators, clinical staff, providers of services, care homes. Four thousand care homes are out there. They may have one or they may have six people living there that are going to go over. By the way, they’ll have a mix. Some will, some won’t. It’s going to cause some confusion in that environment. So, we’re going to need to do a fair amount of training and information. And I know that one of our esteemed advocacy organizations is scheduled to testify here today and I’m sure will raise this.
Again, as I’ve indicated, we’re going to have to coordinate with private care physicians for people living in the community. To be honest, we don’t always know exactly. . . . you go to see your private care physician with your Medi-Cal card. They treat you; you go to the pharmacy; you get your drugs. We’re not there 24 hours a day to know exactly what you’re on. One of the things we’re actually exploring right now is trying to get a run of every drug that was purchased for these 37,000 people in a year so that we can find out just exactly what the drugs are, so when the plans come out, our staff can begin to match people up. It’s going to be extremely labor-intensive, but we don’t think there’s many other ways to do this.
We’ll need, obviously, to provide assistance to people in our state-operated facilities who have been running their own pharmacies and we’ve been purchasing drugs. We’re now going to have to interact with a drug plan or more than one. That’s the other issue. We don’t know how many we’ll have, and we don’t know how many we might have to interact with in order to provide the drug coverage. By the way, for us to switch over to long-term care pharmacies, it will be an extensive amount of work in terms of just our data systems. Even though we run pharmacies now, we bill a Medi-Cal rate, and now we will have to actually move to billing per drug. When we do dosages, we don’t dosage necessarily in 30 days or 28 days. We might dose in 72 hours. We dose in all sorts of medium that is not just your average activity that goes on because we have to use a lot of different approaches to administering.
Probably one of the biggest issues for us is that, as you know, the developmental services system is an entitlement system. So, the question that we’re trying to think through is: If, in fact, we are an entitlement and our mandate—we are an entitlement system—and our system says we’re there to protect the health and safety, if a person is unable to get their drug coverage, will we be obligated to purchase that drug or, conversely, pay the higher premium amount in order so that they do get it? A big question. A major policy issue.
As I said, we’re working very hard to try to get all the materials we can. I think we all have boxes of them stacked in our offices now, more than we can comprehend at one time, trying to figure out what are the best pieces to use and how to adapt those pieces. We’re working with the regional centers on getting their information. The other issue is Social Security and their low-income subsidy program. Although we think very few of our population will be impacted, again, getting a letter in the mail from Social Security that says, Apply for subsidy, is going to create a whole message around, Did I lose my SSI? It causes distress.
And probably on our developmental center sites, obviously the biggest issue for us is transitioning our current pharmacies—which are licensed pharmacies and who do a fabulous job—but transitioning them over to what would need to be a new billing process in order to actually build the drug plan.
So, I think we’re all running as fast as we can. We appreciate your attention. I think our biggest concern is just about the confusion, the fear, and gaps in coverage.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Are there any questions of Ms. Risley?
I didn’t mention, Ms. Risley, that you are the chief of the Office of Human Rights and Advocacy with the Department of Developmental Services. I really appreciated your testimony.
Okay, next we will have Dan Carson, the analyst with the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
Hi, Dan.
MR. DAN CARSON: Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Members. Dan Carson. I’m director of the health services section of our office.
We did take a look at the issue of Medicare Part D. Particularly, we focused on its impact on state expenditures in the Medi-Cal program. I would point out that in scoping our report that way, we would want to acknowledge that the Medicare Modernization Act has a number of provisions that go far beyond Part D. Our office, and I think all of us, will be probably looking at the impact of those, both positive and negative, for some years to come to sort this all out.
In terms of the Medicare program, the title of our report that we issued in our analysis of the budget bill, and that we’ve reissued today and is a separate report for your benefit, is “Part ‘D’ Stands for ‘Deficit.’” Our message, I think, is clear in our look at this, and I think we’re on the same page with the Department of Health Services on this. We do see a significant, potential negative fiscal impact for this new program on the state Medi-Cal program beyond the budget year. Nominally, there is on paper a $100 million net gain for the state in 2005/06, but that really doesn’t tell the whole story of what’s going on. When you look at it on a cash basis, it’s one thing; when you look at it on an accrual basis and the fact that we’ll be losing supplemental rebates that we’re now getting, because a number of individuals, those dual eligibles, will be going off of the Medi-Cal rolls as far as drug coverage is concerned, we see that there will be a negative impact.
If you look at Figure 2 on page 9 of the separate report we gave you—and again, looking at this on a cash basis—we look at an estimated negative fiscal impact on the state General Fund of about $750 million. Now, that figure does not necessarily take into account all of the fiscal effects that may come into play. It also does not take into account some steps the state could take to reduce that impact, but we don’t think you can move from a position, absent changes in federal law and policy, where you would negate this impact entirely.
If you look at Figure 3 on page 10 of that report, a couple of things have been mentioned already. The clawback effect, Stan covered that very well. A couple of others we’d just point out to you that could come into play: As we lose about 55 percent of our drug purchasing power, because they’ll be transferred to Medicare, it could make it harder for the state to get the good deals it has been getting in the past on supplemental rebates. We don’t know exactly how that will play out, but we would characterize that as a risk. There are the county administrative costs that we’ve talked about for eligibility, and we’re trying to see what the federal government will do in terms of providing resources and the processes for dealing with some of the administrative activities that could help minimize those costs.
The very significant issue that we would focus your attention on relating to the notion of wraparound coverage, the current situation is that if the state did nothing, we would, by default, be providing drugs primarily at the state’s expense only—with no further reimbursement from the federal government—for those dual eligibles who decide not to get their drug coverage from Medicare Part D. We think that’s a potential financial exposure to the state eventually in the low hundreds of millions of dollars. If we do nothing, we are in wraparound mode. And so, we think you should seriously consider the Administration’s proposal, which is a part of their budget plan to eliminate the existing coverage as it now stands.
We know that’s going to be a difficult and sensitive issue because we would acknowledge and agree that it’s possible that individuals will not be able to get access to exactly the same drugs they get now under Medi-Cal. We won’t know exactly how robust that coverage will be until these PDPs and Medicare Advantage Plans roll out their formularies. Our concern would be, if the state just steps into the breach to back up whatever the feds don’t cover, number one, you create all the wrong incentives for the federal government and for those private healthcare providers—the PDPs—to cost-shift to the state and cost-shift and cost-shift. It’s a real concern. There may be other things we could do to address those concerns down the line if it turns out the coverage is not robust, but I think our recommendation to you at this point is to keep the pressure on the federal government and those private entities to provide a full and comparable benefit to what they’re getting now under Medi-Cal.
Some of the other recommendations that I’d point out for you and issues that we’ve raised in this report, we think there are some steps the state could take to, again, partly offset some of these financial losses. There are adjustments we could make in those programs we have now, where we are already paying for drugs on the state’s dime, if you will, for individuals who will, in the future, be getting their drug coverage under Medicare Part D. There was a reference earlier. For example, we’ve acquired a number of individuals in the developmental centers who are dual eligibles. I’m sure there will be some transition difficulties getting there, but ultimately, we should be ending up in a place where the state is not paying for their drug coverage any longer. That money, of course, has been built into their budgets.
Another example, and one with more significant fiscal consequences, relates to the Medicaid managed care plans where, in some places on a mandatory basis but in a number of other places on a voluntary basis, there are aged and disabled persons—about 280,000—on a statewide basis enrolled in managed care. A portion of those are dual eligibles who would be getting their coverage in the future, as of January, under Medicare Part D. So, we think the state should be working to adjust what we pay those plans, to back out the money that we built into it for drug coverage for those individuals.
You know, from our conversations with the departments, those are issues that they’re aware of and are looking at, but it’s important, as we go through this budget process, that we keep an eye on them.
A couple of other points real quickly. Those regulations on clawback that were mentioned earlier are final, but we don’t think that should mean the end, at all, of state efforts to change the minds of those individuals in Washington about such issues as how the clawback is calculated. They wrote regulations; they could write new regulations. Or, perhaps, it would take actions by Congress. But we think the state should continue to press the issue because we think that the way those regulations have been written, as DHS has indicated, really do disadvantage California. We’re not getting full credit for efforts like we’ve made in recent years to go after those supplemental rebates, as one example.
You’re paying a lot of attention here today, and we would recommend you continue to do so, about those enrollment efforts for Medicare Part D. There are such significant fiscal consequences for the state plus significant health policy ramifications for many individuals, particularly for poor individuals. They will be able to get this drug coverage for next to nothing. I think we should be doing everything we can within the resources we have and within the resources the federal government gives us to spread the word on that.
I’ll stop here with just one last additional point that we’d call to your attention. The way we’ve organized our programs in the past didn’t reflect the availability of this Medicare Part D drug coverage. So, we need to start to think through: How should we be changing our programs to fit? Well, just one example of that, that we cite in our report, is the community coverage we provide for mental health services through our county mental health systems. One question we think the DMH should take a look at is: How successful and effective are counties now in getting individuals who are mentally ill, and therefore potentially able to qualify as disabled for Social Security benefits, and then, after a two-year waiting period, they can get Medicare? For those individuals who, on a long-term basis, will be on very expensive medications, it obviously could be a benefit for the state for them to get their benefit in the future from Medicare under Part D as opposed to Medi-Cal. The question is, we don’t know how good a job those counties are doing now in moving people through some very difficult processes to get them enrolled ultimately in Medicare. I think it’s one of those areas that needs some attention.
And I’ll leave it there. We’d be happy to try and respond to any questions you may have.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Any questions?
I would like anybody from the panel to respond to this, because we’re talking about cost issues and we’re talking about a whole lot of unknowns. I mean, cost issues certainly are a factor, but my major concern is what this is going to do in terms of disturbing people’s lives. I have a 90-year-old mother who’s in a skilled nursing facility in Seattle and who wouldn’t have a clue in terms of what to do. I’ve real concerns based on what Carol said. I’ve spoken with several social workers in the field of home health who are out in seniors’ homes on a regular daily basis. I mean, the anxiety and the distress that you mentioned are real. I’m really concerned in terms of how we address this cautiously in order to ensure that people are not really negatively harmed or as it relates to what you said, Lora—four or five medications, on the average, for a senior citizen. Seizure medication. I mean, there are such major issues involved with this, but the one that’s nearest and dearest to my heart is people’s lives.
MR. ROSENSTEIN: We share that. This is going to be a very, very complicated process no matter what we do. But we do think there’s one thing that can be done that will make this process go as good as it can go, and that’s our proposal to the federal government to provide continuity of care; that for a transitionary period, be it six months or a year, if somebody who’s on Medi-Cal comes into a pharmacy, that the Medicare drug plan would automatically provide them with any drug that they have gotten off of Medi-Cal. Another federal program for a six-month transition period. And then, that gives people time—the plans—to work with beneficiaries to move them if they need to; where we’re not in the situation where they all of a sudden have to appeal, and they’ve got a seven-day appeal process. The easiest thing to make this transition work the best, we can think, especially under the structure of the current federal law, is to guarantee six months to a year of continuity of care, because if it’s good enough for the Medicaid program, it should be good enough for the Medicare program.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Okay. Well, thank you very much, panel.
We’re going to next have Jeff Flick offer a federal perspective. Jeff is the Region 9 administrator with the Federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Welcome, Mr. Flick.
MR. JEFF FLICK: Good afternoon. I am absolutely delighted to be here today. What an important topic. Before I get started, I’d like to really congratulate everyone in the state. I think that all of you can be very, very proud. Your state, California, has been on the front edge of this. They’ve been very, very involved. They’ve been incredibly helpful. And they’re helping us to understand the issues so that we can deal with them in the best way possible. So, I need to start out with that statement.
MMA is a very big law, and it really does change Medicare in fundamental ways. I’m not going to talk about the quality-of-care provisions. I’m not going to talk about the preventive healthcare benefits. I’m not going to talk about the help for people with chronic healthcare conditions. I’m not even going to talk a lot about the general prescription drug benefit. Instead, I’m going to focus on the areas that I believe you’re most interested in, and that’s the transitioning for dual eligibles and working with some of the low-income populations.
I have a lot to say, so I’m going to try to cover this as fast as I can, because there’s a lot going on, and these are very, very important topics.
CMS has put a comprehensive plan in place for full-benefit, dual-eligible beneficiaries to move from Medicaid to the new Medicare drug benefit January 1, 2006. Along with our many partners in making sure that the full-benefit dual eligibles get the most out of the new comprehensive Medicare benefit, we are implementing a comprehensive plan to assure there are no gaps in coverage for these individuals. The most important thing—no gaps.
CMS is currently working with the states to establish data exchanges that will identify full-benefit dual-eligible beneficiaries whose coverage under Medicaid will end on December 31st of 2005. After identifying these beneficiaries, CMS will contact them by mail this summer, like in the middle of May, to inform them that they are deemed eligible for low-income subsidy. Information will also be available through 1-800-MEDICARE and through our website. And this fall, the full-benefit dual-eligible beneficiaries will be notified of the plan in which they will be auto-enrolled if they do not choose a plan beforehand. So, these individuals will have an opportunity, obviously, to choose their own plan, but if they do not choose their own plan, they will be auto-enrolled. And the reason for that is to make sure that there’s no gap in coverage. That will happen between October 27 and November 10.
CMS is engaged in multiple meetings and coordination efforts with the states to ensure a smooth transition process. We are currently drafting a state legislators’ checklist, in conjunction with state associations, which include questions pertaining to the role states have for accepting and processing low-income subsidy applications, retiree options, state contributions, state insurance laws and regulations, as well as general education and awareness. The checklist will also be available and will provide instructions on how the transition of full-benefit dual eligibles will be handled. In fact, I didn’t think I would have this checklist, but I have copies of it and I’ll leave it with you.
Working in conjunction with the states and the Social Security Administration, CMS will also conduct expansive outreach activities in the spring of this year, beginning in May, to educate Medicare beneficiaries about the new prescription drug plan and to encourage those that do not automatically qualify and to encourage those who do not automatically qualify for the low-income subsidy to apply. To avoid confusion, CMS will notify the full-benefit dual-eligible beneficiaries and the Medicare beneficiaries who receive SSI benefits and the beneficiaries that are enrolled in a Medicare savings program, that they automatically qualify for the subsidy and do not need to apply. It’s a lot of people. I know there’s been a lot of talk about having to apply. Most of the individuals that are going to qualify for this special help will not have to apply, and we’re going to notify them and let them know they are automatically deemed to be eligible.
To make the enrollment process as simple as possible for beneficiaries that are not deemed eligible for the low-income subsidy, CMS worked with SSA and many advocacy groups through an extensive public process to develop an application form and a process to be used to verify the beneficiary’s income and resources to qualify them for the low-income subsidy.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Mr. Flick? Senator Alquist has a question for you.
SENATOR ALQUIST: Thank you.
I think you mentioned earlier that people in nursing homes could auto-enroll?
MR. FLICK: That’s correct.
SENATOR ALQUIST: I have several questions, but what does that really mean to “auto-enroll?”
MR. FLICK: What it means is, for the full-benefit dual-eligible population, we’re going to write them a letter to first tell them they’re eligible for the low-income assistance, and then in the fall we’re going to write them a letter, and we’re going to say, We are assigning you to, let’s say, Plan A. We’re going to list the plan. And that is the plan that you will be enrolled in, effective January 1st, if you don’t choose a plan yourself. Now, we’re obviously going to encourage people to choose their own plan, a plan that’s going to work best for them. But we know some people won’t do that, and we don’t want anyone to go without coverage. So, everyone is going to be assigned a plan that is effective January, and they’re going to know this in October. And in the nursing homes. If they happen to be in a nursing home, they’re going to know this.
So, there’s going to be some advance time here, but the important thing to remember is, no gap in coverage. All of the full-benefit dual eligibles will have drug coverage in January.
SENATOR ALQUIST: As an example, if somebody is in a nursing home and, let’s just say as an example, they don’t speak English and they have certain medications that are particular to their particular needs, how does it work for them to be auto-enrolled in a program that may not meet their needs? And what can be done to see that, as an example, every person who is in a nursing home—English or non-English—is able to communicate what he or she needs and to have those needs be translated into a plan for that person?
MR. FLICK: A couple of ways to respond to that. First, the outreach efforts that we’re involved with right now, they are very, very extensive. We’re working with the provider community in ways we have never done before.
SENATOR ALQUIST: Could you give some examples, please?
MR. FLICK: In fact, we are contacting all of the major provider associations. We’re talking with physicians throughout the state. We’re talking to nursing homes. We’re talking with hospitals. We’re talking with home health providers. We’re talking with pharmacies. We’re providing educational materials about this program. We’re giving them the resources that they can access if they want to understand the details of this, including, obviously, the 1-800-MEDICARE telephone number, including the website, including the HICAP organizations that do a superb job in this state, and including a very detailed mailing, the “Medicare and You” handbook, that’s going to go to individuals, so that these healthcare providers who are already working with these patients will have the ability to help them make sure that they have the drugs that they need. A nursing home is a very good example. Nursing homes are going to be able to work with every one of the residents in their nursing facility, as they already are doing, to make sure that their healthcare needs are addressed.
Now, it is possible that through the auto-enrollment process, someone ends up in a drug plan that is not the one that they prefer. If they are a dual-eligible beneficiary, they can change that drug plan. They can change that drug plan at any time.
SENATOR ALQUIST: I guess one thing I’m concerned with is whether they’re going to even know whether they’re in a plan that is good for them or not. That’s one question. And then I’m looking at another population—those with Alzheimer’s or dementia, knowing that 30 to 40 percent of people over 85 have some form of dementia. This particular population may not even understand what you’re saying, what you’re communicating. So, I think the intent is good. I guess I’m still not comfortable with all the details. I know God and the devil are both in the details, right? So, how do you translate the concerns? Because I’m sure the ones I’ve mentioned are probably pretty basic concerns people have and questions you’ve really heard before. So, how do you really deal with that?
MR. FLICK: Senator, they are. And believe me, I don’t mean to downplay these concerns in any way, shape, or form. They’re very real, and we’re very, very focused on it. I think it’s fair to say we care about all 43 million seniors that are beneficiaries of Medicare.
SENATOR ALQUIST: I believe that.
MR. FLICK: But we’re very focused on this dual-eligible population for all the reasons that have been stated here.
SENATOR ALQUIST: Right. It’s a very vulnerable population.
MR. FLICK: It is indeed.
We’re putting some pretty big requirements on these private companies that are going to operate these drug plans, and we’re asking for help from the provider community, which, you know, sort of God bless the provider community; they’re wonderful.
SENATOR ALQUIST: So, what kinds of things do you have in writing from the people, organizations, and businesses you sound like you are going to be depending on to do the right thing? What kinds of contractual obligations do you have with them to assure us that people do end up in the programs that are right for them?
MR. FLICK: There are several things in writing—requirements—that they have to meet.
SENATOR ALQUIST: As an example?
MR. FLICK: One of the things is they have to submit to us a transition plan. A transition plan basically is: What are you going to do, drug plan, if someone shows up and they’re on a particular prescription drug that is not on your formulary? How are you going to deal with that? What process do you have to deal with that? What assurances are you prepared to provide us that that individual beneficiary is actually going to get the prescription drug that they need and that this transition is processed properly?
You heard Stan talk about this, and Stan’s been very consistent about this. He’s been at our offices at CMS lots of times, basically saying his idea of a really good transition plan is when someone guarantees that for a prescribed period of time, say six months, that no forced drug changes will be implemented. It gives people plenty of time to plan in advance.
SENATOR ALQUIST: That’s an interesting phrase—no forced…?
MR. FLICK: No forced changes in prescription drugs.
SENATOR ALQUIST: Does that mean you could have a forced change in twelve months or nine months?
MR. FLICK: It just means that it allows time for the individual and their physician to consider the formulary, to take a look at the drugs that are recommended on the formulary, and to make judgments about whether that drug is going to work good or not good or whether they need to ask for an exception. That’s another requirement.
SENATOR ALQUIST: So, it does sound to me like, then, there is a forced change after six months and one day.
MR. FLICK: The way the program is set up . . .
SENATOR ALQUIST: Which could create some liability, I would think, for you.
MR. FLICK: The obligation here is that the drug plans have to provide the prescription drugs that are needed by the beneficiaries, and if that particular drug is not on their formulary, then there must be a mechanism—an exception process and appeal process—where that particular prescription drug can be provided.
SENATOR ALQUIST: And is this all in writing that is open to the public?
MR. FLICK: Yes, it is.
SENATOR ALQUIST: Where do we access that?
MR. FLICK: It’s in our regulations. I’d be happy to send you a copy of them. These PDPs and the MAPD programs that apply to provide this benefit . . .
SENATOR ALQUIST: Right. Just the synopsis, not the twelve hundred pages. [Laughter.]
MR. FLICK: I’ll be happy to give you very specific information on the transition plan that is required.
SENATOR ALQUIST: Because it’s a huge concern.
MR. FLICK: It is, and we don’t know yet what we’re going to receive from these organizations. We at CMS are going to review these transition plans and either approve them or not approve them. By the way, we do the same thing with the formularies. The formularies also have to be submitted to us, and the idea is, the formularies have to be very comprehensive and very complete, and they have to include drugs in all of the classes. We at CMS will be reviewing and approving these formularies, and there are a variety of requirements, including a Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee where there are actual doctors and pharmacists that are involved in making these decisions.
SENATOR ALQUIST: And do you have an appeal process?
MR. FLICK: We do.
SENATOR ALQUIST: And is it in writing, and is it sent out both times? You mentioned at the beginning of our discussion that you were sending the initial letters. Does it mention in those initial letters what the appeal process is and how people access that, in simple English or simple whatever?
MR. FLICK: We haven’t actually drafted the letters yet, but it is our intention to be very communicative and to put this in very basic language that most people will understand, and we will be saying to these beneficiaries, It does not matter what plan you choose, there are obligations for every plan.
SENATOR ALQUIST: And how do you—and this will be my last question. I could go on, but I will stop. I know this is a long hearing. My last question is: Eight-hundred numbers are nice, but let’s say someone in a nursing home—or not in a nursing home. Let’s say someone, 89 years old, is living alone at home, where they’re isolated, and let’s say this person has some concerns about what is going on and really wants to talk to a real person. How does that person do that, and how is this communicated in these two initial letters that you’re sending out?
MR. FLICK: We certainly create a number of mechanisms for individual beneficiaries to talk with experts who understand Medicare and who understand these new prescription plans. Of course, they can call the 1-800-MEDICARE telephone number. Obviously, they can sit down one on one with a HICAP counselor. And frequently, if it’s a very complicated situation, that may be one of the very best options.
SENATOR ALQUIST: So, that information is communicated in the letters you send out?
MR. FLICK: That is correct.
SENATOR ALQUIST: All the information on the HICAP is communicated in those two letters?
MR. FLICK: That’s correct.
SENATOR ALQUIST: Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you for your patience.
MR. FLICK: You’re most welcome.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Thank you, Senator.
I have just a couple to interject here before you finish. I’m sorry.
MR. FLICK: That’s all right.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: I’ll tell you what California wants.
MR. FLICK: That’s why I’m here.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Good. California wants automatic coverage of existing drugs. They want continuity of coverage without the need to appeal. I mean, that’s what we want.
MR. FLICK: Okay.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: So it’s not CMS would provide coverage of drugs not on the formulary only if the consumer goes through the appeals process. I’m just sharing that.
MR. FLICK: I know. I appreciate that.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: So, what is CMS’s response to California’s proposal for a 6- to 12-month continuity of care transition period in which a prescription drug plan will be required to cover all existing drugs a Medi-Cal/Medicare beneficiary currently takes, and will the federal government approve this?
MR. FLICK: I’m going to answer it the best I can.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: With an affirmative? [Laughter.]
MR. FLICK: Our technical response today would be that transition plans are very important. We’re going to look at these plans in very great detail. We are going to require that anyone who provides a prescription drug program to Medicare beneficiaries have a responsible transition plan. What we have not done so far is to say to everyone, This is exactly what the plan has to say or be. People can suggest their own plans. Some people might suggest six months. Some people might suggest other things. We don’t know yet because we haven’t received the information yet.
But the intent is to pay attention to the people that are submitting these ideas. We think we’re going to get good ideas. We have the right to either approve or not approve, and we will not approve transition plans that we do not believe are comprehensive enough.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Mr. Flick, we’re talking about. . . . I mean, we have over 4 million individuals on Medicare, of which 1.1 million are dual eligible. We’ve been talking about the dual eligibles being automatically enrolled. I mean, we have a much larger population than that, and I’m concerned about those folks as well.
MR. FLICK: Actually, the good news here is everything that I’ve been talking about does not only apply to the dual eligibles, it applies to all 43 million seniors in this country with Medicare coverage. The requirements are the same. We’re not having a differential here for people that are dual eligibles versus people that are not. Every plan has to have a transition program because people can change plans from year to year. And transitions happen all the time in Medicare. Of course, we already work with managed care companies who do provide some prescription drug benefits. We have some experience with this, and those plans transition people also. But we are aware that the dual population presents some unusual challenges. That’s why we’re really paying attention to these issues.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Just checking our time, Mr. Flick, and we have about five more minutes before we have to move to our next panel.
MR. FLICK: I’m going to submit, of course, all of my written testimony for everyone to read. I’m prepared to stop now and just take questions, if that’s what you would prefer to do.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: I do have a couple.
MR. FLICK: Go right ahead.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Senator, do you have any questions?
SENATOR EDWARD VINCENT: [Inaudible.]
MR. FLICK: Forty-three million—it’s actually seniors and people with disabilities are covered by Medicare today. It’s a lot of people.
SENATOR VINCENT: [Inaudible.]
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: My first question is: Will CMS be amending the clawback formula to accommodate states that have experienced caseload growth, increased costs of prescription drugs, increased utilization, and who have increased their rebate collections due to supplemental rebate programs?
MR. FLICK: The answer is: I’m not sure. But let me go beyond that. We suggested an approach to this. Obviously, this is law, so we have to stay within the law. But there’ve been, essentially, two approaches suggested. One is to do this on a cash basis, and one is to do this on an accrual basis. Obviously, there are some advantages to a cash basis. It’s simpler, it’s clearer, and you don’t have estimates. But we’ve heard from the State of California and from some other states who have basically said, We understand the desire for clarity, but it’s working against us in a significant way because our base year is a bad year for us. In our base year, we didn’t do such a great job of getting some of these rebates. We’d do much, much better if you’d do this on an accrual basis. California’s not the only state with that issue.
What our administer has said is, If you really do have concerns and if you think you’re not saving money—and the intent was for states to save some money—then we want to see those numbers. California has submitted numbers to us. We’re looking at those numbers now. California is not the only state that has this concern.
There’s restrictions, though, within law, that the base year is 2003. You can do that on a cash basis; you can do that on an accrual basis. We have an open mind. We’re looking at the numbers. But I don’t actually know yet what the decision is going to be.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Well, that’s a major concern, also, to California.
MR. FLICK: I understand.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: The second question is, CMS has used a majority of the federal funding to operate the toll-free telephone line to answer consumer questions. However, a recent survey that was done by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that the majority of older adults have either not heard of the 1-800-MEDICARE line or have simply not used the number, and only 13 percent of respondents have actually called the number. So, how has CMS taken steps to increase utilization of that number? Because it’s another one of the outreach techniques.
MR. FLICK: We learned a lot as a result of the discount card initiative. And there were times, candidly, when our telephone number was overwhelmed; where we had in excess of a half a million telephone calls in a 24-hour period. That could happen again as a result of all the changes that are happening in Medicare.
The 1-800 telephone number has been enormously helpful, but it’s not the sole means of communicating, but it is a very important means of communicating. So, what we have done is to really enhance our outreach. We’re working with every kind of community group that you can imagine. We’re working with all the government agencies. The partnerships that we have formed with provider organizations are extremely important. We have, of course, increased the funding for the SHIPs by about 50 percent this year.
I think I was in front of this committee about a year ago. It was when I first came to California. I didn’t know then how good your HICAP organizations are. I was out all over this state, talking about the discount card. Your HICAP organizations are really good. I mean it. That input from the field is, I think, part of the reason why we increased that funding by 50 percent. They are a very important part of this.
Of course, the website tools are very good too. I’ve heard lots of people say, Well, seniors don’t get on the Internet. Actually, a lot of seniors are getting on the Internet, and a lot of their children and a lot of the people who care about seniors are on the Internet. So, that’s a very important tool.
We think we need all these things. We think we need all the community organizations, all the grassroots organizations. We need to be working with the providers. The HICAP organizations are very important. The 1-800 telephone number is very important. The website. All of this.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Well, it’s important but you have to have people using it, and the second thing you have to have is accurate information being given. Studies have shown that the assistance given to callers has been inaccurate in many cases, and I’m hoping that CMS has taken steps to correct that.
MR. FLICK: We have. I’ll tell you personally, in my role as the regional administrator, I call 1-800-MEDICARE myself probably two or three times a week just to test, because I want to know if they’re getting the right answers. My experience was very good, but we did have that one study that indicated some improvements were needed. And I’ll tell you what happened. We hired an awful lot of people very fast because the number of phone calls were increasing. Now we’ve really trained those people up. We pay attention when we get a report that’s critical, and we’ve made lots of improvements in that. But my telephone number is out there. I would love to hear from you if you get any sort of a report that the 1-800 service isn’t working well or anything that we do is not working well. This is what I live and breathe, and this is what I’m all about. For this next couple of months, this is so important, that this transition go well.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Well, obviously, there’s a lot more work to do, and I really appreciate you being here today, and I appreciate your testimony. I believe you do have handouts.
MR. FLICK: I do indeed.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Okay. We’ll make sure that those get distributed.
Thank you so much, Mr. Flick.
MR. FLICK: Thank you.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Now I would like to call Joy Wilson, who is the Federal Affairs counsel and Health Policy director of the National Conference of State Legislatures, who will speak around the area of research and analysis.
Welcome.
MS. JOY WILSON: Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
United Airlines got me here but didn’t get my handouts here; but actually, my handouts are his handouts. I was bringing the checklist and the little cover page they have for state legislators that goes with the checklist, and then my own timeline. I will provide that to everybody on the committee.
Since you’ve heard a lot already, I wanted to take some time to give maybe a little different perspective on clawback and how much change is likely to occur on the clawback. You have to understand that the clawback is a financial piece. It’s part of the funding of the Medicare Part D program. Anything that would reduce the state contribution, as they call it—I continue to call it clawback—anything that reduces the state contribution would then create a hole in the financing for Medicare Part D, which would have to then be plugged.
We know the President has proposed a $60 billion reduction in growth in the Medicaid program over ten years. You put that with clawback— You get my drift on where that’s going.
We worked very hard with CMS to even agree to take into consideration ongoing lawsuits and things that may have some effect on clawback. They chose not to put that in the regulation. They are doing the individual state negotiation operation. I’m not anticipating a lot of change on clawback, but I say: Go forth and do good things. But, just so you know.
There’s been quite a bit of work going on, both before the final rule was established and still after, trying to make sure that whatever the clawback number is, is the real number, because that is your number into perpetuity. So, it’s very important that it be the right number.
The other thing that I would note is that the enrollment process for Medicare Part D is even more complicated than I think you know, because nobody has talked about. . . . when they say “auto-enrollment,” it is random auto-enrollment. The law requires that the auto-enrollment be random.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: He didn’t mention that. Where’s Mr. Flick? He’s disappeared.
Continue.
MS. WILSON: And let me explain what that means. For the dual eligibles, they’re deemed eligible for the low-income subsidy. So, technically, they don’t have to apply. Some of them will apply anyway because they’re not going to get that they’re not supposed to. And then, they’re going to get a letter that says, You’re eligible for the low-income subsidy. That assumes people understand what that means. Does that mean I’m signed up for a program? It sounds like I might be. I don’t know. If I don’t read the second letter that says, You’ve been enrolled in [something], I think I’m enrolled in something anyway because I got the letter about the low-income subsidy. So, just remember that there’s this two-step process: First you find out whether you’re eligible for the subsidy or not, then you still have to enroll in a plan.
Now, the low-income subsidy determination begins July 1 for states. States are required to be able to conduct a full eligibility determination. CMS is trying very hard to make SSA, the Social Security Administration, the primary enrollment vehicle. However, there are provisions in the law that may make some people think they should send them to the state Medicaid office. If you go to the state Medicaid office for your low-income subsidy determination, if you are eligible for other Medicare/Medicaid, the slimby/quimby, you have to enroll. If they apply at the Social Security Administration, no such requirement exists. I believe that CMS is working with the Social Security Administration to see if they might not want to help us out with that or do something, but you should know that that does exist and it is statutory.
Now, you can’t apply for a prescription drug program. The open season begins in November. The low-income subsidy determination begins in July. People are going to get letters in October, saying that they’ve been assigned to a plan. Now, this is a random assignment. This means the plan may or may not have anything to do with any drug that they might be taking. Now, the question is: How does the state get involved or how does someone else get involved in helping people? Once the plans are determined in October and they can begin marketing in November, who helps people figure out if they’re in the right plan? Just how does that happen? I think that is going to be a real test and something to think about.
So, there is a three-step process potentially, as opposed to a two-step process. We have the low-income subsidy determination. You have auto-enrollment. And then, someone has to assess whether auto-enrollment actually enrolled the person in the appropriate plan. So, I just throw that out.
I think the other outreach activity that hasn’t been much discussed, but I think is probably critical, is everybody’s been talking about informing the Medicare beneficiary, but somebody needs to inform the children of the Medicare beneficiaries because much of the burden will likely accrue to the children of the Medicare beneficiaries, and they need to know as much about this program as the Medicare beneficiaries. I think to make this a successful program, there’s going to have to be some thought about how to educate the more general public on what this means so that they can help their parents. CMS, of course, will have a lot of things available on the web. Clearly, it’s going to be the children of the Medicare beneficiaries that are more likely to go there for assistance. The 1-800 number, of course, is more likely what the actual beneficiaries will use. And so, I think using the media to help get the word out about what all is going on and the very tight timeframe that’s involved I think is critical.
Let me just say there was a conference call that CMS did for state people on the formulary issue, and I’d like to just say a couple of things about that. One is, is that they did make a change in their approach on the formulary. So much of a change that the Congressional Budget Office changed the estimate of the cost of the program, because they said that their analysis was that using the formulary in the way that CMS is currently talking about it, it would be a more extensive formulary and therefore more costly. So, I think in terms of coverage issues, that’s a positive step.
Transition. The counter to allowing a six-month eligibility for Medicaid that was raised at the conference call on Monday, the 14th—so, this was just a few days ago—was that a state could allow a Medicaid beneficiary to get a multiple-month prescription filled towards the end of the year, and that would, of course, be matchable and would at least take them into the next year. Now, of course, this would have you paying twice. So, on top of clawback, you would be paying. I think the message, the feedback, they got was not very positive on that proposal. But, I think it’s worth noting that they made the proposal and that, clearly, this transition issue is something that we need more work on.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Yes, I would say.
MS. WILSON: Yes. So, I thought that was worth mentioning.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: There are several questions that we have for you, and I really want to thank you for being here. I know that you had to rearrange your schedule to be here today, so we really appreciate your responsiveness and also the expertise that you bring to the policy discussion.
A couple of things. The chair of Senate Health, Senator Ortiz—who will be back, I think, but is not here right now—had a couple of questions, as I did too. Her first question was: How likely is it that Congress will act to amend provisions in the MMA this year? Not good, huh? In your opinion.
MS. WILSON: Close to zero.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Close to zero.
MS. WILSON: Yes. I would think the only way that they would amend it is if something goes terribly wrong in the enrollment process this fall. But I wouldn’t anticipate any changes this year.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Can you provide us with a perspective on how CMS is making accommodations (or not) for other states in the nation that are experiencing some of the similar challenges that we are in California?
MS. WILSON: Well, certainly on clawback, I think I’ve addressed that, that they are not anxious to make many changes. They’re very anxious to get the final numbers for each state so that they can go about calculating the assessment that they will be charging you come 2006. So, their priority is to get states to figure out what their clawback is, to reach some accommodation on what the factors are. I don’t anticipate much change in their approach on how they address getting the clawback. I think this accrual and cash-basis thing is still an open question.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: And do you know, Ms. Wilson, what other states besides California are adversely affected by this clawback formula?
MS. WILSON: All of them. I mean, CBO does not score savings for states in the first couple of years. This was not one of our better issues on the Hill.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: My last question to you is: How have other states designed outreach plans for consumers that you think are really quite sterling?
MS. WILSON: We haven’t heard very much yet. A lot of states are trying to figure out exactly what their costs are going to be related to the outreach and education and training of staff and whether or not they’re going to have additional facility needs to do intake and that kind of thing. Certainly, I think in states like California with very diverse populations, the need to produce educational materials in several languages is also an issue. As you know, the Administration has proposed capping state administrative funds for Medicaid at a time when we are expecting that administrative costs for the program are going to go up, especially associated with implementing MMA. So, I have not heard much, other than that states are trying to figure out what they can do within their budgets to be effective. We’ll have to see.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Thank you very much.
Senator Ortiz, would you like to . . .
SENATOR ORTIZ: I have no questions of this witness. I had a meeting, and I was watching on the monitor. I’m happy to follow your lead, Madam Chair.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Thank you very much, Ms. Wilson.
MS. WILSON: Thank you.
SENATOR ORTIZ: Would you like me to take over? Okay. It looks like we’re right on time. I believe we’ll now hear testimony from the representatives from the California Health Advocates and Senior Action Network, to discuss institutional readiness in regard to monitoring implementation and the consumer assistance issues.
We have two witnesses before us today, addressing institutional readiness. Our first speaker is Ms. Bonnie Burns, who is a training and policy specialist with the California Health Advocates. I believe your presentation may be roughly five minutes, is my understanding. And you’ve prepared a PowerPoint presentation. I will make that available in printout form to all of our Members. I believe it’s handed out now. Is that correct? Is this your PowerPoint presentation?
MS. BONNIE BURNS: I think that is something different.
SENATOR ORTIZ: Okay. And we do have David Grant, who is the director of Health Policy, Senior Action Network of San Francisco.
You may begin.
MS. BURNS: Thank you. And thank you for asking me. One of the problems with being a later speaker is that everybody says what you wanted to say first. So, let me see if I can get this to move.
As you may have assumed, this is a program that’s going to require people to take action, with certain exceptions, like the people who are dually eligible. And unlike other parts of Medicare, people do have to affirmatively decide to sign up for this. In addition to which, it isn’t just PDPs—standalone prescription drug programs—but a variety of contracting arrangements that are possible under Medicare Advantage that include HMOs but also include other types of contracting arrangements, some of which don’t have to have a prescription drug benefit attached to it. So, it is a more complicated decision than you may have heard.
The impact on consumers is considerable. It is a two-step process. People do have to first decide whether to enroll in Part D or not, and if it is appropriate for them to enroll in Part D, which can’t be assumed on its face, then they would be faced with the decision about choosing a particular drug plan. One of the things that HICAP will need to do is to decide what people already have, to determine whether or not they should sign up for Part D, because there are some population groups that maybe shouldn’t, and I’m going to talk about that in a moment.
I’m going to go through these rather quickly because I am short on time. And, of course, as you’ve been hearing, the duals will be automatically assigned. First, automatically enrolled in Part D; then, automatically assigned to a plan at some different point in time.
Choosing one of these plans, once a decision has been made to enroll in Part D, is a complication similar to the discount card, but greater, because not only will they need to know some of the same information that they needed to know for a discount card, they will have to do things like compare formularies. They’ll have to determine whether the plan being offered to them is the basic plan or one that is enhanced, because both are allowed under the law. They will have to know something about the preauthorization rules that a plan may have. They’ll have to know what cost-sharing is required because the basic benefits that everyone has talked about is a plan design that is not locked in. Companies can design their plan any way they choose, as long as the actuarial equivalence is the same as the basic benefits spelled out in the law. There will be network requirements, and there will also be differences in premiums, depending on whether or not the plan is basic or enhanced and how it’s organized. So, selecting a plan is going to be more complicated than it was just choosing a discount card.
The duals you’ve already heard about. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on that, except to say, some of the duals have other coverage, and CMS may not know that when they automatically assign someone to a plan or when they enroll them in Part D, which, if they have employer group coverage, it may be exactly the wrong thing to do and could jeopardize those employer benefits. And I’ll talk about that on a later slide, in a moment.
The low-income people also need to make a decision to enroll in Part D, and also, we need to know what they already have before that decision is made. They also have the same problems in choosing a plan, except they have a further complexity in that they can only choose from those plans that are eligible for the federal subsidy, unless someone’s going to pay the additional premium for them, and that is a factor that they may not understand. And just like the duals, they’re going to have the problem of understanding how to use the new system and understanding what co-payments they have, based on their income.
I’m going back to that slide for just a second. One of the issues that hasn’t been discussed much is, the co-payments that both duals and low-income people have will go up each year. But if people take multiple medications, even a dollar a medication cost-sharing may be more than that person can afford. I have a friend who is a dual, and she takes 27 different medications. She obviously can’t afford even $27 a month. Her response was that she will probably end up back in the nursing home because in the nursing home, there is no cost-sharing, and that’s an intended effect on the Medi-Cal program.
Medigap in 2006 changes. People will have to make a lot of very complicated decisions in regards to the Medigap plan. One thing this population will learn that they do not know now is that they cannot buy insurance to cover any of the cost-sharing under Part D of Medicare. They don’t know that yet, and I think that’s going to come as a pretty big shock to people who are accustomed to buying a Medigap policy to help with their out-of-pocket costs. And then, no new Medigap policies with a prescription drug benefit can be sold after 1/1/06.
The retiree plans is something I want to spend a minute on because employers have a couple of options; one of which is to take the federal subsidy if their benefits are equal to, or better than, Medicare’s. If they choose to do that, their retirees cannot enroll in Part D or the employer cannot get the federal subsidy. And the effect of that may be that if a person mistakenly enrolls in Part D, they may end up losing all of their retiree benefits as a result because the employer can’t allow them to be in Part D. Most of these plans have a single requirement: You either have to have Medicare or not have Medicare, but they don’t like having people in multiple situations on the same retiree plan. This could have an unintended effect for people who have either coverage as a dependent or coverage as a retiree who are getting lots and lots of messages from everyone to enroll in Part D, and if they do that, they may in fact cause a problem that they hadn’t anticipated.
They’re going to get a lot of conflicting messages. Multiple agencies, both state and federal, and many consumer groups and other organizations are developing materials and will be sending mailings to people. There’s going to be an overload, I think, of outreach efforts to many people and no outreach to others who are harder to reach. So, I think this is going to be a problem in a number of different ways. For instance, employers don’t have a good record of communicating with retirees. Depending on their plan year, they may only communicate with their retiree population once, and it may be in a way that the retirees don’t understand what they’re supposed to do.
The potential for changes, once a person has signed up for one of these plans, is also a complexity that people haven’t talked much about. That’s something that we also need to think about in terms of the duals, because while they may have a drug covered initially, that can change. Now, the duals, of course, can switch plans on a monthly basis if they choose to. Other people cannot. And duals, of course, are limited to the plans that qualify for the subsidy.
This is a timeline. I know you can’t decipher it at the moment, but what this is intended to show you is the number of outreach efforts that are going to be made to the Medicare population by a variety of state and federal agencies. The communications are going to be going out over extended periods of time, from various places, to different populations, with different messages. One of the things that this is intended to show you is the progression of those outreach efforts and the impact on the HICAP program. It’s been our experience that the discount card took a much longer counseling time period than other issues have in the past. It may mean that existing counselors will be able to serve fewer people because of the complexity of the choices that are going to be before these folks.
And just as a cautionary note here, it does take time to recruit and train volunteers, to get them up to speed on issues so that they can counsel, but it also takes staff to monitor and supervise those people. If you’re helping people sign up for Part D, that’s one issue. There’s one population of retirees that may not need to sign up for Part D. But when it comes to choosing a plan, an actual PDP or MAPD plan, that’s fraught with liability concerns because you can make some pretty seriously wrong choices. If the HICAP program is helping people make those choices, that’s an issue that needs to be thought through.
And then, the last side is just an effort to give you some ideas of how the state could have some options here. One would be, of course, to expand and enhance the HICAP capability, both staffing and in-house Internet capability—because, in many places in this state, Internet capability is not easily obtained—and to leverage and coordinate resources at the state level, which is already happening, but that needs to filter down to the local level. So, if the Social Security office is doing an outreach in a community, HICAP should be there. If HICAP is doing an outreach, Social Security should be there. That needs to be coordinated, somehow, from the state level.
There needs to be a statewide HICAP advertising campaign to let people know where they can go for help, and that could originate at the state level. We’re encouraging the state to think seriously about the economic tradeoffs of using state money to do wraparounds and pay co-payments and perhaps even subsidize premiums for better coverage because, if you don’t pay for it that way, you very well may pay for it in the Medicaid program with hospital stays, nursing home stays, and other ways: impacts on prisons and county jails when people don’t get the medication that they need.
And with that, I’ll conclude my presentation.
SENATOR ORTIZ: Thank you so much, Ms. Burns.
Our next speaker is Mr. David Grant, who is the director of Health Policy, Senior Action Network of San Francisco.
We’ve been joined by Assemblymember Canciamilla. Welcome. And we have Senator Vincent, who’s been with us.
You may begin.
MR. DAVID GRANT: Thank you, Senator, for the opportunity to come here and speak with you today.
My name is David Grant. As you mentioned, I’m the director of Health Policy for Senior Action Network in San Francisco. SAN is a 14-year-old coalition of over 150 community groups that represents over 30,000 seniors and persons with disabilities. For the past two years, we’ve served as the HICAP contractor for San Francisco, and among other duties, I was the program manager for the past two years.
It’s not without a certain irony that a year ago I sat here, possibly in this very same chair next to Bonnie, with Jeff Flick and told the committee about the upcoming problems of the Medicare Modernization Act you created for California’s Medicare beneficiaries. In that time the prospects have changed very little. There’s actions the states could have taken to smooth the transition that remain uncompleted.
If you want to take a look at the white document that the sergeants have handed around, you can see this is our initial effort to try and explain Part D to consumers. I think the chart in the middle outlines. . . . there are three different classes already of people with different kinds of coverage, different timelines for application, different co-payments and so on. I’d invite everybody here to imagine explaining this at a senior center lunch program, for example, as I’ve had to do.
I was very impressed that Mr. Flick and others have complimented the HICAP program. We’ve worked very hard the past year on the drug discount cards and have received the princely sum of 14½ cents per person to do that in San Francisco. We’re looking forward in the coming year to an even bigger challenge and hopefully, possibly, a quarter.
There are three major problem areas in this transition that I’ll briefly review here today. Each of them, we could go on for a great length of time, and some of them have already been covered. So, I’ll skim over some parts.
First off, the Part D coverage that’s envisioned is not the same as Medi-Cal for the dual-eligible populations. Part D will be a formulary-based program with considerable restrictions on which drugs are offered. There has been considerable discussion in Washington of, what I’ll call, “the Veil of Tiers” model, where plans, in order to come in at the $35 rate, offer coverage on a tiered basis. The basic plan would cover aspirin, vitamin pills—I don’t know—basic stuff. More expensive drugs would be offered at a 20 or 30 percent co-payment, and the more expensive drugs still would be offered on a tier 3 basis, with 50, 60, or 70 percent co-payments. Now, the problem is, of course, that these are not covered by the subsidy as outlined by the federal government and would come out of pocket of the Medicare beneficiaries. Or, if they were unable to afford them, they would be at the general hospital, getting medications instead.
Second, the Part D plan is not administered by Medi-Cal. In fact, Part D is provided by a raft of private insurance plans. At this time, we have no idea precisely how many. Over 120 submitted applications to the federal government. So, we can assume that a large number of these will want to operate in California.
Further, these Pharmacy Benefit Manager plans, or PBM companies, are completely unregulated by the state. As we heard the person from DMHC mention earlier today, the state has, essentially, no hold over these plans whatever, other than fiscal solvency. So, they’re completely unregulated by the federal government, immune to any controls by California on their operation, so that we have seen, in a speck, the creation of coach-class or second-class Medi-Cal for a million beneficiaries; people whose drug coverage will not be monitored by the state and not be provided by the state. Consumer questions will not be dealt with. Appeals will not be handled, and everything else will just be shuffled off to Buffalo, Tampa, or wherever the mail order fulfillment house is located.
Finally, the Part D program is not part of Medi-Cal, and by shifting prescription medications to a separate insurance program administered by an agency of the federal government, Californians who’ve relied on Medi-Cal for health insurance will see a major segment of their coverage for prescription drugs tossed into a system run by private for-profit companies who simply never need answer to the state for their operations, for customer service issues, for appeals, or anything else.
I noted earlier that there are some things the state could be doing to smooth this transition, and if you’ll look in the orange document that the sergeants have handed out, this is language that we’ve proposed for legislation that the state could actually make some efforts to deal with this problem. The first thing we’d like to do is have DHS monitor a variety of costs, customer service, and quality issues related to the operations of Part D and report to the Legislature. I think it’s critical, if the Legislature wants to take a role in this process, that it instruct the department to start looking at these kinds of issues, putting dollar numbers next to them, and having Mr. Rosenstein or someone else come in on a six-month basis and tell you what’s going on.
We would also like to use DHS to create a report card on the Part D plans. There were several mentions earlier, for example, of continuity of care. We’re also looking at issues like customer service performance and so on; that DHS could collect this information and put it out in the form of a report card so that consumers could actually tell which plans measure up and which ones don’t.
And finally, we’d like to ask the state to collect a $1 fee for each Part D policy sold in California to support consumer education and counseling efforts similarly as provided by the HICAP program.
I think it’s important, too, to offer up the idea that the financial issues we’ve talked about need not necessarily be a disaster for California. We’ve handed out a yellow copy of a policy piece that we’ve prepared. My coauthor, Linda Berry, testified in front of the committee a while back. She’s here with us today.
I’d like to actually explore the idea of California becoming the Part D provider for Medi-Cal. Historically, the act has eliminated this possibility, but changes this year in the Legislature open some doors: Senator Ortiz’s bill, SB 19, which would create a State Pharmacy Assistance Program, puts California into a different category of programs that have SPAPs. AB 65, which would require that all of the local initiatives become Knox-Keene licensed entities, creates a series of small, nonprofit organizations around the state which would be in a position to be sponsors of a state PBM for Medi-Cal. And I think the argument we’re making here is that rather than a $750 million hole in the bottom of the “Titanic,” the State of California could lend an effort towards getting this revenue and actually make a quarter of a million dollars on the program.
In essence, I’d like to conclude by saying that I don’t think we should see this situation as a train wreck; although, many people will describe it in exactly that language. There are opportunities that the state could take to smooth the transition process. There are mechanisms the state could take to monitor the implementation of this program and measure its effectiveness and impact. And there are ways, despite the best efforts of the congressional drafters, that the state can get a handle on quality issues and possibly, even, some of the dollars associated with this program.
Thank you.
SENATOR ORTIZ: Thank you so much for your testimony and the work that you’re both doing on the local level with the HICAP programs and for your continued advocacy on behalf of all Medicare beneficiaries. I apologize we don’t have Mr. Rosenstein here to comment on your recommendations. Perhaps we can forward those and ask for some response from the Administration on those recommendations.
Yes, I wish you weren’t sitting here. It’s actually a year and a month later, with many of these problems not only not reserved, but certainly, the clock is ticking for these to be even greater disasters than we envisioned a year ago.
We’re a little bit behind time, but let me see if there’s a question from any of the committee members of the two.
Assemblymember Berg.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Thank you, Senator.
Bonnie, I have a question for you. As well, David, I have a question for you.
Is there an estimate of the funding level adequate to meet the needs of consumers through the HICAP program? And how far off do you think is the current level of funding in comparison to the anticipated level?
MS. BURNS: Well, from what I can tell, the total funding is in the range of cents for each Medicare beneficiary, when it should be dollars to deliver the kind of services that are going to be necessary to help people through this process. Some of that is state funding, as you know, and some of it is federal funding. But a bigger one is when those funds are available to the AAAs, to the HICAPs, to get the processes in place that are going to be needed: the training, the staffing, the Internet capability, to be ready for what you see on this timeline.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: So, any budget delay, for example, that then delays contracting could create a problem.
MS. BURNS: And I think you’re probably well aware, the federal funding year is different than California’s funding year. That presents some budgetary problems, which I hope that those of you in the Legislature are going to be able to work out so that HICAP gets the bulk of the funding that they’re going to need in time to prepare for what we expect to be a very heavy demand in the fall.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Thank you, Bonnie.
And, David, how would you advise the state regarding outreach to hard-to-reach populations, especially the culturally diverse communities?
MR. GRANT: We found in doing the drug discount card outreach that the most effective way is to have people talk to other people. There’s just no way around it. We found with the drug discount card that you could get a group of twenty people together and explain the program in about half an hour. But it still took forty-five minutes or better per person to shop on the Internet, with the pill bottles in hand, and all the other problems associated with it. That’s why we outlined in the proposed legislation the idea of a dollar-a-head fee.
The piece that we handed out earlier—here, for example, we’re doing 5,000 copies of this out of Senior Action Network’s budget. It’s not part of the 14½ cents that we get from the state. I’ll note in passing last year that Ohio, where they apparently did have a Presidential election campaign, I got 43½ cents per person from CMS for outreach. We got 4½ cents in this state. So, it’s hard to say what’s a precise dollar number.
I think the larger question I toss back to the members of the Legislature is we’re looking at pinning the entire state outreach effort on the backs of a volunteer program; people who I have to go recruit and tell them, Let’s go do 125 community education events for nothing in the course of the coming year. And, by the way, et cetera, et cetera.
Bonnie’s point is well-taken that the dollars need to come at the appropriate time in the process, which is now not January, and they need to come in the appropriate volume. But I think we also need to recognize that we’re looking at putting a really tremendous burden on the HICAP program to the point where it’s a fit that may not hold up.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you, Senator.
SENATOR ORTIZ: You’re welcome. Other questions, committee members, for these witnesses?
Thank you so much for your presentations. I do appreciate it.
Now we are going to hear from various senior and consumer advocacy groups who are going to detail their concerns regarding Part D, its implementation, and to provide us, again, with some recommendations on how the state can, and how the federal government should, ease some of the consumer transition issues.
We have four witnesses. We’re going to ask Mr. Gary Passmore, who is the director of the Congress of California Seniors, to go first. Then we’ll have Ernie Powell, Mr. Wright, and then Marty Omoto.
Gary, you may begin.
MR. GARY PASSMORE: Thank you, Senator. Before I begin, let me wish you a Happy Birthday.
SENATOR ORTIZ: Ah. Thank you so much for that.
MR. PASSMORE: Not today but very soon.
SENATOR ORTIZ: Very soon.
SENATOR ORTIZ: And for the record, you don’t look a day older than when you were on the Sacramento City Council.
SENATOR ORTIZ: Let’s give him double time.
MR. PASSMORE: I couldn’t resist, but thank you.
SENATOR ORTIZ: Thank you. The birthday’s Saturday, so thank you for that reminder that I’ll reach the ripe age of 48 soon.
MR. PASSMORE: Thank you, Senator Ortiz, Assemblymember Berg, and other Members of all four committees here, for holding this hearing and once again focusing stakeholder attention on what’s a huge issue that faces California.
I’m going to keep my remarks very brief, but I don’t want you to interpret my brevity as meaning that I think it’s unimportant. As you’ve all noted, some many months ago now, you held a hearing. A lot of these issues came up. I guess it’s really alarming that so few of these issues have been resolved in that precious period of time.
Some of the other folks here on this panel, I know, are going to talk about policies in the program and some changes that may need to be made, some of the implications for the state. I want to focus my comments on implementation. Many of my remarks are going to be based on our recent experience with the drug discount cards. So, consider this, in some respects, a report from the real world.
We were out for several months over the winter in four counties in Southern California—and I congratulate David on his 14½ cents. Our figures are 1.6 cents per person that we were asked to reach by CMS. This wasn’t a very generous program. We accomplished it, but we gained a lot of experience. All that most people have seen and heard about this new Medicare benefit involves reports of media criticism about it and congressional anger over the true cost.
And so, my first point is that we don’t really walk into a neutral environment on this undertaking and on this rollout. We’re walking into a negative consumer environment, or maybe at best very cynical. Everywhere we went, we discovered that people have a very negative view of this benefit. Some seem inclined to delay signing up for it because of that negativity, and that puts some of them at risk, as the Sacramento Bee recently reported, of potential penalties through their life of participation in Part D if they delay too long in signing up for the program; because, like Part B, it has penalties built in for not signing up within a fairly short period of time.
In our outreach, even for people in the drug discount card that were eligible for a $1,200 credit—I mean, we’re talking about free drugs, up to $1,200 over two years—most people didn’t want to sign up. They were very skeptical. I can tell you and restate what David said. We might have been able to make a presentation, but effective enrollment required one-on-one counseling, in effect, and it required for success sometimes two sessions or more with some of these folks; again, for a free benefit. We’re not talking about a $35-a-month fee that they were facing. This was to get some pretty low-income people through last year in this.
People told us in our conversations with them that they thought this was a flawed benefit. They thought that there were big giveaways for the drug companies here. They talked about the fact they thought drug prices were just going to go up, so that whatever coverage they got was just going to end up meaning higher priced drugs. And all of these issues, in addition to the content and the facts of the benefit that we’ve been talking about all afternoon, all of this mindset’s got to be dealt with in any kind of education and outreach program. In effect, we’ve got to overcome the negativity that’s already out there, especially in the senior community, about this program.
The second point I want to make is that we encountered near-universal ignorance about the permanent benefit in our outreach. Ironically, they knew that there were problems; that the Congress thought it was too expensive. They knew all the criticisms, but very few people understand what it is that they’re going to have to do; what the benefit will actually offer; what the co-pays are going to be; what are their responsibilities; what kinds of decisions they as consumers are going to make; how much it’s going to cost in monthly fees. People don’t really understand how this is going to operate.
I guess what I want to remind you of is that most seniors don’t look at Medicare benefits in a private market, competitive kind of environment, even if they’re getting fee-for-service for medical providers. They don’t think of doctors as competing with one another based on price or services or hospitals. But that’s the way these drug plans are going to be presented, and I think it’s going to make them really step back and wonder. They don’t look at Medicare in a private, competitive marketplace environment.
The third point is that the time’s running out. You’ve heard all of that. And I won’t go into the horror stories, but I will tell you that the training for the drug discount program that was conducted by CMS under contract occurred the day the benefit took effect. So, that was very helpful for us as an organization to plan. It took us seven weeks out of a five-month program before we got Spanish-language materials to distribute. The first three weeks of our program, we were, at our office, making Xerox copies of the program in order to have materials for a $550 billion entitlement program, and it was just outrageous. This is what went on in the real world with the drug discount program. I’m confident that I can tell you it’s one of the reasons why enrollment was so limited.
I’m going to skip straight to—and I hope that you’ve gotten a printed copy of my comments here. There’s a massive job that’s ahead, and we see very little coordination. We would encourage a couple of very specific actions.
First, I believe that the Department of Health Services needs to be designated as the official state agency responsible for the coordination and oversight of this program in the State of California. I don’t think we’ve actually taken that step, but I think that they need to be charged with this as a responsibility, among their other responsibilities. And if they have, then great; then we need to know about it. But I think somebody needs to take that step.
The second thing is, they need to assemble a workgroup that involves all of the people you’ve heard from today, and some people you haven’t, including some of the foundation funders that are going to be funding some of the outreach programs. It’s got to include the long-term care providers because they’re dealing with about 100,000 of the recipients; some of the hardest to deal with recipients.
Third, I would hope that this Legislature and the Schwarzenegger Administration would consider calling upon Congress by resolution, or whatever way you can, to extend the current Medicaid drug coverage at least through June 30th this year as another alternative to the one that was proposed by Stan for a pushback.
I won’t get into the automatic enrollment issue, but I think that the state ought to also consider developing and funding an education outreach and enrollment program; putting a price tag on it. I would hope Stan wouldn’t wait until mid-May. If he’s got numbers today or tomorrow, he should share those. And then, see if the state needs to come forward with some funding in this year’s budget to try to make education outreach and enrollment available. I think that in the long run, as some of the other witnesses said, it will pay off.
And finally, Senator, I think it is incumbent upon you and others to make sure that any State Pharmacy Assistance Program that we create dovetails with this benefit to provide, to the maximum extent possible, seamless coverage for as many Californians as possible.
Thanks.
SENATOR ORTIZ: Thank you so much, Gary. And I’m sure there are going to be questions after the other speakers. Unless there are questions of the speaker now?
Thank you.
Mr. Powell, you’re next. Welcome.
MR. ERNIE POWELL: Thank you, Senator. It’s very good to be here.
I’m Ernie Powell. I’m associate state director for advocacy for the California state office. I’m based in Pasadena, but I work statewide.
As you know, AARP has worked very hard over the course of the last ten years to secure a drug benefit within Medicare. We’re seeing triple inflation for out-of-pocket expenses for prescription drugs. We’ve seen that for a long time. And we had a couple of attempts: two bills passed before the 2003 benefit became law; both of those on the House side, but we couldn’t get it through the Senate. And finally, we saw the opportunity and we knew that that opportunity was a less-than-perfect piece of legislation, and we’ve learned more of that today.
I want to say that AARP is committed to a number of changes at the federal level and also committed to working with all the state agencies that have anything to do with this in terms a, as best as possible, smooth transition so that no care is dropped; so that no one loses the prescription drugs that they need at any moment in time during this transition period.
I want to talk to you a little bit about some of the changes that we’ve sought to get in the federal law. First of all, we have told our representatives—and our Federal Affairs Department has worked on this—that we want to see the language removed in the 2003 bill that prohibits the Secretary of Health and Human Services from negotiating for more affordable drug prices. That was always a standard that we had going up before the bill passed in 2003. Unfortunately, we could not get that added in the negotiations that we had.
Second, we continue to seek legislation through the Dorgan-Snow legislation to legalize importation, and there is now a companion bill on the House side which we endorse. I talk to seniors from Ukiah to San Diego, and I’ve never met anybody who has been harmed by the imports that they do, either from Canada or from Mexico. And so, we know that that can be regulated and done safely.
Third, we want to see the “donut hole”—the infamous “donut hole”—narrowed or closed. That is a unique and very bad feature in the bill, and we want to see that changed.
We want to work with state legislatures to pass laws extending state purchasing and bargaining power to lower the price of drugs. We’ve done that since 2003. We continue to work with you to do that.
We want to work with states to develop an evidence-based evaluation of drug effectiveness and also promote faster approval of generic competitors by enacting remaining provisions of McCain-Schumer.
We understand that there’ll be a number of challenges, and AARP’s resources are there to work with consumer groups, with our elected officials, our state agencies, to deal with those challenges. We know there’ll be some difficulties in terms of transition. We are preparing a broad-based educational campaign for all of our members. We, too, experienced and saw firsthand the lack of impact, if you will, of the drug discount card. I personally spent a month in the Central Coast area of California and saw the response to 800 numbers and saw the response to the probably too many choices that people had to make and the reality and the perception that it was as complicated as it was.
The good part is that the money is secured. The good part is that the President is there, that there will be a prescription drug benefit in Medicare. We knew we had to work past 2003, and we’re committed to doing that work.
Thank you very much.
SENATOR ORTIZ: Thank you so much, Mr. Powell.
Let me go to our next speaker. Mr. Wright, welcome.
MR. ANTHONY WRIGHT: Thank you, Senator. Thank you, Assemblymember.
My name is Anthony Wright. I’m the executive director of Health Access, California. We’re a statewide healthcare consumer advocacy coalition of 200 organizations working toward the goal of quality, affordable healthcare for all. As part of our coalition are great senior organizations, like the two to my right, but as well as a number of other groups that depend on Medi-Cal and other programs. And so, our comments are taken in that vein.
The Administration started this hearing off by talking about the limited role that the state has in Medicare, and that is a totally appropriate comment. The Medicare bill has very much shifted to try to concentrate both the Administration’s program and the ________ program at the federal government. What I would like to urge is that California, however limited our role is, that we expand our role as much as possible as both an educator, as an advocate, as a regulator, and as a safety net for especially the most vulnerable of our populations.
Let me start as an advocate at the federal level. As Mr. Powell mentioned, this is not a done deal at the federal level. There are various people seeking various changes to this proposal. I have here a list, which has been distributed, a ten-page list of all the different bills introduced in Congress to amend, change, fix this Medicare law. This is an ongoing conversation in Congress, and California should be an advocate representing the state and the state’s interest with things like the clawback, as well as the interests of its citizens who will be impacted by these changes.
Obviously, some of the things have been already talked about; things like filling in the “donut hole.” For a lot of people, this is not what most people would consider coverage, with a big gap in the middle of coverage. Filling that in is a high priority. And all this stuff that has already been talked about, about dual eligibles, with regard to making sure that they continue to have access to drugs, as well as fixing the clawback formula so that this is actually state fiscal relief rather than additional burden.
There’s been a lot of talk about the cost of the Medicare prescription drug benefit. We certainly think that the ability to negotiate for better drug prices as well as getting rid of the parts of the bill that are unrelated to Medicare that deal with health savings accounts would be at least a first step toward reducing the costs and making sure that the money goes to the drug benefit rather than to ancillary expenses. And we also do have some concerns about some of the privatization aspects—the premium support elements that are in the Medicare bill—that are slated to come into effect much later in time but do have an impact on the integrity of the program.
So, we have a strong interest to work at the federal level, both elected officials as well as the state as a whole.
In terms of what the state can do in its own right, clearly, there was a lot of discussion earlier this afternoon about the dual eligibles, about the transitions. We strongly support making sure that there’s a wraparound for Medi-Medi’s, making sure that they continue to have access to drugs that they would not get under the existing program. I think our goals should be that those seniors and people with disabilities should be held harmless. That means changes to the budget that may be costly, but that is something that we certainly should be able to do as a state here in California.
I want to talk a little bit about our ability as a regulator. Another goal that we should try to put forward is that the new prescription drug plans, which haven’t existed before because no one ever thought to get only prescription drug coverage before, that these prescription drug plans should have to abide by the same standards as other plans in California. Now, obviously, the federal government has some very strict requirements on what the state can and cannot do in this regard, but I would urge the State of California to explore this and to exploit any amount of __________ attention that there is in the law.
We have interests beyond fiscal solvency. We have interests in continuity of care, which we do have standards for HMOs. Those same standards should be applied to the prescription drug plans. We have standards on cultural and linguistic care, and that’s a huge issue for California. California has a very different population. There is nothing in current Medicare law with regard to cultural and linguistic standards with regard to these prescription drug plans other than the Civil Rights Act. We have other standards in California. We have a clear and compelling interest why we have an interest in that. And, we are our own region, so there isn’t this sort of multistate problem in terms of licensure that there might be in other things. We should push on that issue, we think. Again, not to say that we will necessarily win, but we should push on that issue.
Finally, obviously, this compels the interest for the drug discount card conversation that I know Senator Ortiz and a number of other legislators have engaged in seriously. We need to make sure that that goes forward. And again, the education of the population, both in terms of investing in education and also, again, making sure that we advocate at the federal level for the changes that will help California.
And with that, I thank you.
SENATOR ORTIZ: Thank you so much, Mr. Wright. Questions of Mr. Wright right now?
We have the stand-in for Mr. Omoto who will identify herself. It’s not Mr. Omoto, but welcome.
MS. NANCY CHANCE: Thank you.
My name is Nancy Chance, and I’m the executive director of Training Towards Self-Reliance, which is a community-based organization that provides independent living services and supports to adults with developmental disabilities, and I am here on behalf of the California Disability Community Action Network also, standing in for Marty Omoto, who had a scheduling conflict.
California Disability Community Action Network is a nonpartisan statewide advocacy organization that links people to disability rights. As the executive director of Training Towards Self-Reliance, I’ve heard a lot of things today that leave me very, very, very concerned for the population that I work with personally. I have many prepared remarks, but you’ve heard most of them. And so, what I’m going to do is talk about the things that I did hear that concern me for the population I work with.
I heard someone say earlier that we need to not send the outreach out to just the seniors but to their children. I have real concerns for the people that I work with who live independently. Somebody needs to contact my agency or somebody like my agency that’s working with these guys because they’re going to be terrified. They’re going to get something and not understand it, so they won’t deal with it. Then they’re going to get something that says, Your benefits are ended—I think that’s what I heard is how it will be stated—and you’re going to have just chaos.
So, the outreach is of great concern to us, and it sounds like a lot of people are doing outreach, but I’m wondering how much of that is being geared towards people with cognitive disabilities, cognitive disabilities that speak another language, people in care homes. At least there’s a care provider there that’s going to know when the mail comes. I’m really worried about people that are living independently, on their own, who are going to get this mail and not understand it at all.
You’ve heard so much of the stuff that I was going to say. I guess what I would encourage is to find a way for the outreach to include people with developmental disabilities, to include the care providers, include those people’s families and other advocates, people in independent living centers, in that outreach effort.
The thing that I’m not sure about—and like I said, I’m a little concerned, because we did a town hall telemeeting through California Disability Community Action Network. This is where we link forty sites together with hundreds of people throughout the state, and we talked about this issue. Stan Rosenstein came on the phone and discussed this in December. My biggest concern is, the people that were on the line hadn’t heard of this stuff. They didn’t know, and their families didn’t know. I mean, it’s December and now this is all going to come into play and they’re going to have, how long—eight weeks, six weeks—to choose something that they need to learn to understand?
Anyway, those are my concerns, and they’re probably not put as eloquently as Marty would have done it. But like I said, most of what I wanted to say you have heard. But I do want you to consider those people with developmental disabilities, with cognitive limitations, and reach out to those agencies. I heard somebody talk about the regional centers and being lucky to have the regional centers—and we are and they are—but the regional center caseloads are huge. They’re not going to be able to address all of these. I was just thinking, in my own agency, probably 20 percent of my people are dual eligible. And so, 40,000 people in the regional center system, that’s a huge task for a very limited piece of time to make them understand those plans, those drug plans.
Anyway, thank you for your time.
SENATOR ORTIZ: Thank you for your comments. I think we’re all alarmed. I think your repeating the risks of the most vulnerable remind us again that this is pretty frightening. I know we’re trying to do some things in my district in community forums, and many of you will get called as we try to coordinate that, but everybody’s region is different. The resources are different. Not all Area Agencies on Aging are a good outlet and then in some populations don’t apply at all. I mean, we sat here a year and a month ago, trying to ask for that kind of assistance and that translation and communication, and here we are closer to the deadline with not a lot of it in place.
So, I do appreciate it. You’ve given good direction and insight on how we might ease the transition, but for the purposes of repetition of how bad the problem is, we were asked by the Pro Tem in our house to do another hearing, jointly with, certainly, the Assembly. But again, I encourage Members to do these kinds of information and the resources in their districts as we gear up for this.
So, thank you all for your testimony. Questions of any of these speakers? Fortunately, I don’t have questions because. . . . I mean, I think we know what the problem is. The question is the solutions, which you’ve all laid them out.
Thank you all for your testimony.
MR. PASSMORE: Senator, let me make one little, last comment. I don’t think it’s come out today, but I believe there was $900 million included in the original federal appropriation for education and outreach for this program. I’m fairly confident that’s a correct number.
SENATOR ORTIZ: Nationally.
MR. PASSMORE: Yes. My rough calculations are that California should be looking for a check of about $22 million. Neither of you is a shrinking violet. Maybe one of you ought to call and see when we’re going to get it. For education and outreach. And I’m serious about that.
UNIDENTIFIED: [Inaudible.]
MR. PASSMORE: Well, I was just looking for dual eligibles, which is about a fourth of it. So, you’re right—our figure would be about $90 million invested in California on education and outreach, and I think that we ought to find out where it’s being spent and for whom.
SENATOR ORTIZ: You know what? We can certainly forward that, with a series of recommendations and inquiries of the agency secretary as well as the department, to find out whether there are communications from the federal government. I was informed by somebody that after last year’s—I can’t recall who it was—but after our hearing last year, we had CMS here, and we managed to pull down, I think, $800,000 to HICAP—or 600 or 700 thousand—as a result of the hearing. If we can, in fact, find out whether there’s more money out there to do the outreach and the information and the communication, then we ought to find out from the Administration. We’ll put a formal request in, and you can help my staff, and Assemblymember Berg and I and Senator Alquist can co-sign that letter and hopefully get a response before the committee to share that with you all.
Thank you again for all of your time and your testimony.
We now are going to hear from representatives from the California Medical Association as well as the California Pharmacists Association to detail how the implementation of Part D will affect patient care and impact the state’s physicians and pharmacists.
We have Mr. Corcoran from CMA here. Welcome, Dustin. As well as Michael Negrete from the California Pharmacists Association.
Mr. Corcoran, you can begin. Welcome.
MR. DUSTIN CORCORAN: Thank you, Madam Chair. Pleasure to be here. I’ve been watching the hearings, as they’ve been going on, back at my office, and suffice it to say: confusion, confusion, confusion. We’re on hour, I don’t know what, of your hearing, and I think it’s still pretty darn confusing.
Looking at it from a consumer perspective—and we’ve heard from many of them—this potentially could be a very difficult thing to try and implement in the field for both the pharmacists and for the physicians. We have begun, as the California Medical Association—and the pharmacists can talk about what their outreach strategies are—but we have begun as physicians to try and locate how we can coordinate with our local medical societies in helping to educate them so that they can educate their patients.
In looking at and just going over and trying to understand the complex formulas and trying to understand how the formularies will be put together, how to advise patients who may have many, many multiples of medications that they’re on which ones are going to fit best for them, we’re not sure yet. We don’t know what those are going to look like exactly. To understand those classifications is kind of fundamental in our need to begin the outreach and education process to our physician members. We are prepared to do that, but having physicians and pharmacists educated, trained, and knowledgeable is of utmost importance to be able to reach out to the consumer and to try and guide them in the right direction. How are we going to do that? I’m not sure how effective we can be in doing that. I’m not sure, but we’re prepared to do that.
We’re looking for financing. We’re looking for ways to be able to put brochures and pamphlets together and put those in the hands of our members. In fact, at our Physician Leadership Day that’s going to be coming up just in a couple of weeks here, we’re having a breakout session on MMA and to begin to outreach to our Ethnic Physician forum to try and help them understand and be able to explain to their patients.
So, we’re going to look at a multitude of outreach methods, but this thing simply is going to be difficult. It’s dramatic in its change. It could potentially be dramatic and punitive towards patients, but we hope it won’t be. But we’re fearful. We’re fearful for our members. We’re fearful for the things and the bureaucratic pieces that they’re going to have to juggle in understanding a multitude of formularies and trying to advise their patients, to make sure there’s not a breakdown in continuity of care, to make sure that there’s not harm to patient care. But at this point, there’s just a great deal of uncertainty. The physicians are going to need to be educated, and we hope that we can play a small role in that. But we’ll see.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: I have a question, Dustin—a couple of them. Older adults—I think of my mother who’s ninety. So, would my mother ask her physician about this? No, my mother would probably ask me. The second person she’d probably ask, if not me, would be her pharmacist. I think they’re going to be heavily inundated because my mother doesn’t know to ask her physician about anything related to insurance. Obviously, I’m sure that physicians don’t feel that they have enough or even adequate information about the changes to properly advise their patients. I mean, it’s very complicated.
MR. CORCORAN: Enormously.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Yes.
MR. CORCORAN: It’s frightening how complicated it is. And right now, physicians are not in a position to be able to advise their patients, at least not the vast majority or the vast numbers of physicians. That’s why we’re beginning that outreach program. But you’re right—to consider the difficult choices, particularly when you think about in a Medicare managed care environment the limited amount of time that a physician has to spend with the patient beyond their patient care, to be able to sit down and try and work through which formulary is going to work best for them and the medications they’re taking. I’m envisioning a scenario where somebody may be on four medications; two of them are covered under one plan, and two others are covered under another. How do you advise your patient on which to go to? You’re going to have to make a judgment as a provider at that point about which ones you think you can substitute most effectively. That’s a difficult thing, and that’s hard to do in a limited time-set that you have with that patient, to make a decision that complex about that person’s care and what’s most comfortable for them.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: One of the things I would be interested in—and not for you to have to respond to today—but I would like your recommendations through CMA in terms of what more could be done to educate physicians about the Medicare Part D and other changes to Medicare, to ensure that older adults and other beneficiaries have the best information possible. You will represent one of those target populations, but basically, what more do you think could be done to educate physicians? And again, you don’t have to answer that today, but I would appreciate hearing back from you on that.
MR. CORCORAN: I’ll answer just very briefly, and I’ll send you over a more detailed memorandum on what we’re planning to do. We’re going to do both a statewide component—CMA sending out brochures and explanations to physician members—and also establish a program that our local county medical societies can implement. A number of them have expressed interest in how to establish those, how to hold community forums, how to have just informational hearings at their own medical society meetings and bringing experts in and being able to educate their physicians that way. So, we’re going to try and approach it both from a statewide and a local perspective.
ASSEMBLYMEMBER BERG: Thank you.
SENATOR ORTIZ: Let me thank you, Mr. Corcoran. I have a question, but I’ll wait until Mr. Negrete completes his presentation.
Welcome.
MR. MICHAEL NEGRETE: Thank you.
My name is Michael Negrete. I’ve worked with the California Pharmacists Association for approximately three-and-a-half years now. Actually, a couple of months ago I went to work for a wholly-owned subsidiary, the association called Premiere Pharmacists Networks. The purpose of that company is to put together networks of specially trained pharmacists who can perform specialized services to patients located throughout California. I’m still, obviously, a member of CPhA. I work very closely with CPhA and have been asked to speak here today to express their interests and concerns related to this issue.
The California Pharmacists Association is about 5,500 members. Many of those practice in community pharmacies; although, we do have pharmacists who are members who do practice in hospitals, long-term care facilities, managed care environments and so on. But I will focus the majority of my comments today around how we think the implementation of the Medicare Part D drug benefit will impact patients and pharmacists in the community pharmacy.
The pharmacy is going to be a really interesting place in the grand scheme of things with this benefit because it will be in the pharmacy in January when patients show up and either get this pill and everything goes great and, Hey, Part D’s a great success! or, probably more realistically, they show up at the pharmacy and it turns into a fiasco. If any of you have been into a pharmacy on any Monday, you’ll know how busy it is. If any of you have been into a pharmacy on a Monday after a holiday, you’ll know how much busier that is. If any of you have been into a pharmacy particularly when it does a high degree of Medi-Cal at the beginning of the month, you’ll see how even busier that is. What we’ve got here is a “Perfect Storm.” January 2nd, which will be the first day that most people show up to the pharmacies to get their meds, particularly those who are Medi-Medi patients and transferred into Part D, will show up on January 2nd, after a holiday, which is a Monday. And you throw on the top of that the fact that it’s anticipated that the CalRx program will be rolling out in January, and then a lot of patients will probably be showing up to the pharmacy to ask pharmacists about the CalRx program and ask the pharmacists to enroll in the CalRx or get them through the process, you can really start to understand how we in the pharmacy see the “D” in the Medicare Part D benefit as standing for “Disaster.” Probably not the first person to say it today; maybe I am.
But I don’t know that it has to be that way. I don’t think it does. I think we’re in a situation right now where an ounce of prevention might very well save a pound of worth in the future. I think there’s a lot of things that could be done in preparation beforehand to help with the transition. It will be very challenging. It will probably cost money, more than a couple of cents per beneficiary, I would imagine.
One of the things that we would see as a possibility is to have a lot of the volunteers that are out there—the HICAP program and hopefully pharmacists as well—being able to work with these individuals and these patients and these programs and their physicians, to sit down with these folks and say, Here’s the medications that you’re on right now, particularly for the dual eligibles on Medi-Cal. Here’s the formulary benefit options that are available to you. Given your situation, here’s probably the best choice, but you’re probably still going to have issues with these other drugs. Here’s some considerations that we should talk to your physician about and let them act upon—hopefully before January—such that you don’t have this disaster in the pharmacies in January. I see that as being a real possible, real potential, real valuable thing to do. Pharmacists do this all day long; they do the formulary juggle. Unfortunately, we’re in an environment now where physicians don’t have the resources, the time, or ability to deal with that. A lot of times now, they say, I’m going to write what I’m going to write, and if there’s a formulary issue, the pharmacist will take care of it and call me back and he will let me make the decision on what to do. We do that all the time. We will not be able to do this in real time at the pharmacy in January. That will not happen. And even before January we will not be able to have a pharmacist hold the presses on the dispensing, stop answering the phones and step out with patients to be able to do these kinds of questions. It will have to be appointment-based. It will have to be with specially trained pharmacists that understand the benefit. It is very, very complicated, as we’ve heard already today.
But I think that is something that is a possibility, that the association could definitely help other organizations put something like that together and make it coordinated amongst all the outreach efforts that are going out there in the next several months.
So, that’s our concerns. Those are our potential ideas for solutions that we would love to help out with, and I’d be happy to answer any questions that you all might have.
SENATOR ORTIZ: Thank you for your presentation. I have a couple of questions. Obviously, my question was going to be how comfortable and prepared are the physicians as well as the pharmacists in the process that lies ahead, but for the physicians, the initiation of an appeal process, you may be the only source of that appeal process for the beneficiaries. We’d love for you to fix all these problems; you know, that last stage of being able to appeal on behalf.
MR. CORCORAN: Sure. There’s plenty of time to carve out in a physician’s day to be able to manage that. [Laughter.]
SENATOR ORTIZ: Is there any likelihood that, in fact, the physicians are going to feel comfortable initiating the appeal process?
MR. CORCORAN: That’ll be part of the educational process in helping them understand how to be patient advocates. But again, to think about this in the timeframe that a physician may have with the patients is very difficult. We’re going to have to educate them as part of not only explaining the formulas and what option may be right for them, but also helping them to understand if there is a problem and there really is a medical need for them to be on a specific medication, how they’re going to help that patient, because they do have a duty to that patient. But it’s a very difficult thing for them to navigate. It’s going to be difficult. It’s going to be difficult for us to reach the number of physicians we’re going to need to, to explain that appeals process.
SENATOR ORTIZ: Have you begun the template?
MR. CORCORAN: We have.
SENATOR ORTIZ: Obviously, the physician is going to be, maybe, the first and only, if not last, point of contact for the beneficiaries, but if there is something that hopefully can be shared that might be applicable in another setting for either pharmacists or advocacy groups or those who are doing community forums—and we’ll call upon you in the Sac Sierra Medical Society as we do our community forums here, and the Pharmacy Association as well. But I think the sooner that you give us guidance, the better we’ll all feel.
MR. CORCORAN: We’ll be happy to do that. As we put those materials together, we’ll make sure that we get them to you so you’re aware of what we’re putting out. It also behooves us to work with the pharmacists, too, because there will be that need for redundancy and making sure that there is proper messaging and explanations at both points of contact.
SENATOR ORTIZ: And that presumes you have a literate, cognizant, English-speaking/reading patient. It may be 2 percent of the potential beneficiary population. I mean, the challenges are just surmountable.
I have a question for Mr. Negrete. Have you received any kind of guidance from the state or the federal government—and the pharmacists and the Pharmacists Association—in terms of developing a standardized procedure to inform your patients? I mean, has anyone on the federal level or on the state level provided, again, some sort of parameters and, again, a template or a boilerplate beginning place to help you inform your patients of the formulary changes or the higher co-payments that are under Part D and of their rights and options that you can then take as a starting point document to then replicate each week—revise?
MR. NEGRETE: The answer is pretty much “No.” We have just the basics out there, and it’s, quite frankly, at this point, no fault of the state or the feds or CMS. The situation we’re in is, we won’t know a lot of this information until just before it gets implemented. The applications to be a PDP, to offer a drug benefit as an independent administrator, aren’t even due until March 23rd. Their formularies have to be submitted April 18th, but they have to submit bids in June. At that point, negotiations start between the plan and CMS to determine whether or not they’re actually going to be a provider. We won’t even know until summer who the players are and, really, what those formularies are and what the co-pay structures are; what the benefit design is. Again, we know what the standard benefit is, but as we heard earlier today, there’s no saying that the standard benefit is what’s actually going to be offered in the marketplace in any given region. It might be one of the options; it might be none of the options; it might be all of the options; but I would probably venture to say it’s probably going to be none or one of the options.
SENATOR ORTIZ: It’s frightening.
Well, thank you, both, for your testimony and for being here today. I know we’re going to hear more from you as things unfold.
As I go through this—and we know that the proposal that was enacted in Congress was enacted, I think, between midnight and two in the morning. I mean, that’s the truth. You know, we sit here and we’re flabbergasted, and we’re looking at it a year and a month after the first time we looked at it and we were scared. I don’t know whether the congressional representatives have had to face their constituents in their districts and answer the same questions or what people thought they were achieving in the enactment of this proposal. I mean, there are glaring problems across the system, never mind the inability to negotiate drug prices. So, it’s really frightening, and in the end, it’s ultimately our proximity to constituents that is going to make us most accountable, whether we have good answers or not. So, we’re going to call upon you to do this as we move forward.
I think Assemblymember Berg and others are considering some resolutions to Congress. That might be a gentle reminder—again. I think I did one last year, but I think Senator Alquist has an interest, and Assemblymember Berg. Of course, we’ll try to get some answers and directions from our Department of Health Services as well as the agency level to see what they’re doing to negotiate pulling down the dollars and otherwise.
Thank you both.
We now have, I think, our Public Comment portion. I do hope that there aren’t a lot, but we certainly want you to come forward. I want everyone who’s coming forward to state their name for the record and their organization, if there’s an affiliation that we should know about.
Welcome.
MS. ANGELA GILLIARD: Thank you. Angela Gilliard, legislative advocate for Western Center on Law and Poverty.
Much of what’s been said today I will not repeat, but I will say the sergeant is passing out a document that has been drafted by a number of organizations who have been working on this issue—a number of legal service organizations and other advocates. I’ll just read off the supporting organizations. There’s California Health Advocates, Center for Health Care Rights, National Senior Citizens Law Center, San Francisco AIDS Foundation. Some of the not listed organizations are Project Inform. We have a workgroup that we’ve just begun to meet with the agency and the various department heads about these issues. But also, the Health Consumer Alliance, of which I represent. Health Consumer Alliance has nine legal service organizations throughout the state. There’s Fresno, Kern, Los Angeles, Orange County, Sacramento, San Diego, the Bay Area, San Mateo. And then, there’s the National Health Law Program and Western Center.
We are very concerned that our client centers see the Medi-Cal client. Our phones are going to light up before the pharmacy phones light up, but our phones are going to just light up because we represent the Medi-Cal beneficiaries. So, the Medi-Medi’s are going to call us. They’re going to be defaulted into these plans. They’re not going to understand. All of the issues that were raised—the language access or the prescription drugs that they normally get, will they still be able to get?—they’re going to be looking for information, and our centers are going to be inundated.
And so, I wanted to, first of all, let you know that we’re out here, that we are a real resource and that we do see clients. We see several thousand clients a year, and we expect that to be exponentially increased, as well as the problems. I just wanted to submit my testimony for now—I know that there’ll be other forums where we’ll be able to add our expertise—and to also let you know we are working with several of the departments and with the agency on education and outreach, along with a lot of the other groups I just mentioned.
SENATOR ORTIZ: Thank you so much. I appreciate your time, and I appreciate the fact that you are located here in Sacramento. We’ll call upon you when we do the community forums in my district.
Welcome.
MS. PEGGY GOLDSTEIN: Thank you.
I’m Peggy Goldstein and I’m with the California Association of Health Facilities, and we represent nursing homes. I just want to say a couple of things about how this program is going to affect the people in nursing homes, that’s been talked about already earlier, and also, what we’re going to do. And then, I wanted to make a comment on some other things that were not mentioned about this program.
First of all, we have basically three or four things. We’re concerned about the formularies because we have patients who need medications. It is our responsibility to see that they get them, and right now, under the Medi-Cal program, there’s a formulary and you know what you’re dealing with. In this new world, we may have several formularies, and we’re going to have to become educated ourselves, as nursing home providers, as to which PDPs are in our area, what formularies they have. We’re going to have to assess the patients who are in our facilities in October/November and figure out whether or not the PDPs they’ve been assigned to are the ones that are going to give them the drugs they need and then what we’re going to do if they’re not. It is going to fall to many people to do education, but in the long run, when you’re in a 24-hour facility, the facility has to make sure that you get the drugs. So, we’re going to have to talk to patients; we’re going to have to talk to families.
The other complication for us is the issue of the pharmacy provider. We are required to provide certain types of services—24-hour delivery services, emergency kits, a lot of things like that that are required—and we do that through one pharmacy. In this case, our pharmacy may not be the pharmacy that our patients are assigned to. Now, if all of the pharmacies do contract with all of the PDPs, it’ll be okay. It’ll be, sort of, their problem. They’ll have to be billing a lot of different people. But, if they don’t—for instance, my long-term care pharmacy does not have a contract with the PDP that my patients have been assigned to—I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I’m going to have to get the patients to switch to the PDP that has a contract with my long-term care pharmacy. It’s very difficult.
We’re really worried about the safety net, about what you do when things are not covered. There are some things that are specifically not covered: barbiturates and benzodiazepines. Now, I haven’t done a study yet as to how many patients in nursing homes have those kinds of needs; maybe there’s not many. But to the extent there are, those are not on the formulary at all and will not be covered at all. So, there may be things like that that won’t be covered.
We have already outreached to CMS and to the Department of Health Services. I will be calling the ombudsman to work with him on education. The problem is, you can educate people that this is coming, but you cannot tell them who they go to, who will be the PDP in their area, and what they can get from them or not get from them. As the earlier pharmacist said, that all doesn’t happen until September. The good thing is, CMS intends to auto-enroll everyone in the 24-hour facilities sometime between September 15th and November 15th. So, hopefully, we’ll be able to get the lists and know who is assigned to which ones, assess, and then give them the opportunity to switch if they need to in that, like, 6-week period, between the 15th and the 31st of December. But it could be a mess on January 1st.
We are committed to make sure our patients get what they need; to educate, to work with all the agencies. We’re doing that now, and we’ll continue to do that.
I wanted to mention one other thing that hasn’t been mentioned here, and this doesn’t have to do with the dual eligibles. This has to do with the other people who might choose this program, whether they are part of a subsidized program or they as a Medicare person decides to choose. This is a permanent program, and when you go on Medicare, you have a certain period of time to choose whether you will sign up for Part D or not. If you are confused, you are scared about signing up for it—you figure, Well, I don’t have to because it’s a voluntary program—and you wait too long to sign up, your premiums go up. So, if you want to get the lowest premium, you have to sign up for this program within a certain period of time of you becoming eligible for Medicare. That has nothing to do with nursing home people particularly, but I think it’s something that needs to be put out there. It’s information about this program that people need to understand.
My opinion, and you had asked the question about what are they doing? My opinion is that they are trying to take this piece of the benefit and turn it into a competitive, cheaper, market-driven program. The problem is, people’s health and lives and medication needs are not market-driven; it is health-driven. It is need-driven. And federal programs, as the state program, need to be designed based on people’s needs, not on the marketplace, in my opinion.
We’re willing to help. We will answer any questions. We’re going to be stuck with this, and we’re going to have to deal with it.
SENATOR ORTIZ: Now, I understand you have submitted a one-page comment sheet to the committee.
MS. GOLDSTEIN: Yes.
SENATOR ORTIZ: We would encourage the staff and the members to know that we have that available. It’s on the dual eligibles who are covered under the long-term care facilities model. That may be a resource for you and your districts, but more importantly, you know how to contact Peggy to be able to have her come into your community, hopefully.
MS. GOLDSTEIN: Sure. Be glad to.
SENATOR ORTIZ: Let me see if there are any questions of committee members or staff, since they have been diligent in sitting here as well.
Thank you so much for your testimony.
Are there other witnesses under public testimony?
MS. BURNS: One last thing. Bonnie Burns, California Health Advocates.
In listening to DMHC talk about the licensing issue, they’re struggling with what license they have to license a PDP, but that and solvency are the only control the state has. But the licensing can be as broad as you make it because they have to be a state-licensed entity unless they seek a waiver from CMS, which they can do. You also don’t get the premium tax, and you don’t get the premium tax from many of the Medicare Advantage plans either. So, as more and more of the Medicare population moves into these contracting arrangements with Medicare, you need to think about what impact that has on your budget in terms of the premium taxes that you don’t get from entities that have to be licensed by the state. And there is, still, an open question about whether or not they’re subject to the guarantee association. So, that’s another issue that has to be sorted through.
One of my comments at NAIC, where I’m a funded consumer representative—National Association of Insurance Commissioners—was: What interest would a state have in licensing an entity to do business in their state if they don’t get a premium tax and they’re not subject to their guarantee association? Why would you even want to license them? I think those are still open questions that you as legislators should be asking as they go through this process of trying to figure out how to license the entities that are going to be the PDPs selling benefits to the residents of your state.
SENATOR ORTIZ: Thank you for that testimony. It triggers sort of a sidebar question that came up earlier regarding our licensing authority: How broad is that? If we attempt it through the licensing, through DMHC, to actually gain some regulatory policy direction through the licensing and forego the fees, as you’ve appropriately reminded us, would we run afoul in that licensing authority on the conditions of that license that could run us afoul—for example, an interstate commerce clause debate—or run afoul of the federal preemption issues? I mean, it is a novel question that might afford us a greater authority and ability to direct but, on the other hand, waive the fees or not.
MS. BURNS: And I think the issue of whether or not they’re subject to your guarantee association is still an important question. The NAIC is circulating a checklist for states. DMHC is not allowed to do out-of-state travel, so they have not been able to come to the NAIC meetings. The Department of Insurance does go, and they’re trying to keep DMHC apprised of what’s going on at NAIC, but the fact that they’re not there to hear the exchange as states talk about this, I think is a real shortsighted approach to this. DMHC is a very small agency. They need to understand how other states are talking about this and trying to figure out how to deal with all of these licensing issues.
SENATOR ORTIZ: We would love either a meeting in my office or sharing the checklist with members to try to sort through and see what we can do regarding the NAIC guidelines and checklist and whether or not we can.
MS. BURNS: Yes. They’re more in the form of questions. I’d be happy to share that with you anytime.
SENATOR ORTIZ: Please do. There may be novel pieces of legislation or policy direction recommendations. Thank you.
Others who want to weigh in with comments or questions?
Let me, then, thank you all: all of the witnesses here today, my staff, the Members that were here. Senator Vincent—always great to be here in all of these hearings. And we had Assemblymember Berg as well as Senator Alquist and others who joined us. I think it’s been informative. It just hasn’t been very uplifting, unfortunately. I’m sure it won’t be the last time we review this.
Thank you all. This committee is adjourned.
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